chapter house

See also: chapterhouse and chapter-house

English

Alternative forms

• chapter-house
• chapterhouse

Noun

chapter house (plural chapter houses)

1. A building attached to a cathedral, church, or monastery and used as a meeting place.
   • 1724, Daniel Defoe, Journey from London to the Land's End:

     The cloister, and the chapter-house adjoining to the church, are the finest here of any I have seen in England; the latter is octagon, or eight-square, and is 150 feet in its circumference.

   • 1906, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 2, in Sir Nigel:

     In the center lay the broad Abbey buildings, with church and cloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and frater-house, all buzzing with a busy life.

2. A building used by a sorority or fraternity as a residence or meeting place.
   • 1929 September 23, “New Plays in Manhattan”, in Time:

     At the house-party herein represented a murder is done, and the locale of the deed is a chapter house on the pleasant campus at Williamston, Mass.

Synonyms

• (building used by a sorority or fraternity): Greek house

Hypernyms

• house

Translations

church building used as a meeting place

• Dutch: kapittelzaal (nl) f
• French: salle capitulaire (fr) f
• German: Kapitelsaal (de) m
• Old English: capitolhūs n

References

• “chapter house”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.