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shrine

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ʃɹaɪ̯n//

A holy or sacred place dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, or similar figure of awe and respect, at which said figure is venerated or worshipped.

noun

  1. 1

    A holy or sacred place dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, or similar figure of awe and respect, at which said figure is venerated or worshipped.

    Entering the tunnel, we pass a small shrine above our heads which contains a statue of St Barbara, the patron saint of tunnellers. It is traditional to have such shrines on every tunnel site.

  2. 2

    A case, box, or receptacle, especially one in which are deposited sacred relics, as the bones of a saint.

  3. 3

    figurativeA place or object hallowed from its history or associations.

    a shrine of art

Etymology

From Middle English shryne, from Old English scrīn (“reliquary, ark of the covenant”), from Medieval Latin scrīnium (“reliquary”), “case or chest for books or papers” in Classical Latin. Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Compare Old Norse skrín, Old High German skrīni (German Schrein).

verb

  1. 1

    To enshrine; to place reverently, as if in a shrine.

    Shrined in his sanctuary.

Forms

plural
shrines
past tense
shrined
past participle
shrined
present participle
shrining
third person singular
shrines
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).