cloister.
A covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that surround a quadrangle; especially:
Meaning & usage
A covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that surround a quadrangle; especially: such an arcade in a monastery;
A covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that surround a quadrangle; especially: such an arcade fitted with representations of the stages of Christ's Passion.
A place, especially a monastery or convent, devoted to religious seclusion.
The monastic life.
Where this word comes from
Recorded since about 1300 as Middle English cloistre, borrowed from Old French cloistre, clostre, or via Old English clauster, both from Medieval Latin claustrum (“portion of monastery closed off to laity”), from Latin claustrum (“place shut in, bar, bolt, enclosure”), a derivation of the past participle of claudere (“to close”). Doublet of claustrum.
To become a Roman Catholic religious.
To confine in a cloister, voluntarily or not.
To deliberately withdraw from worldly things.
To provide with a cloister or cloisters.
The architect cloistered the college just like the monastery which founded it.
To protect or isolate.
Where this word comes from
Recorded since about 1300 as Middle English cloistre, borrowed from Old French cloistre, clostre, or via Old English clauster, both from Medieval Latin claustrum (“portion of monastery closed off to laity”), from Latin claustrum (“place shut in, bar, bolt, enclosure”), a derivation of the past participle of claudere (“to close”). Doublet of claustrum.
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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.