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The rounded east (liturgical east) end of a church that contains or is behind the altar.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/æps/
  1. The rounded east (liturgical east) end of a church that contains or is behind the altar.

    Our private tour of the cathedral even allowed us to walk through the apse, which most tours don't.
  2. The rounded east (liturgical east) end of a church that contains or is behind the altar. The interior portion of this section of the church building, excluding the ambulatory and any apse chapels.

  3. A semicircular projection from any building that is similar to a church's apse.

    The college has an apse that once held a small chapel.
  4. The bishop's seat or throne in ancient churches.

  5. A reliquary: a case in which the relics of saints are kept.

  6. Obsolete form of apsis (“the nearest and furthest points to the centre of gravitational attraction for a body in orbit”).

    alt-of · obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Latin apsis, hapsis, from Ancient Greek ἁψίς (hapsís, “arch, vault”), from ἅπτω (háptō, “to bind, join”).

noun/æps/
  1. An aspen tree.

    dialectal · obsolete
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.