columbarium

1. 1.

   a birdhouse for pigeons

   Synonymsdovecotecolumbary

   Broaderbirdhouse
2. 2.

   a niche for a funeral urn containing the ashes of the cremated dead

   Synonymscinerarium

   Broaderrecess
3. 3.

   a sepulchral vault or other structure having recesses in the walls to receive cinerary urns

   Broadervault

Other forms of columbarium

plural

columbaria

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about columbarium

What does columbarium mean?

columbarium means "a birdhouse for pigeons". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in columbarium?

columbarium has 5 syllables: co-lum-ba-ri-um. The stress falls on "ba".

What is another word for columbarium?

Close synonyms include dovecote, columbary, cinerarium. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is columbarium a common word?

columbarium is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.