Why this word is great
CALEFACTORY — [Adjective, Noun] An adjective describing that which warms; as a noun, the heated common room in a monastery, or a small ceremonial heater for a priest’s hands. Borrowed from Medieval Latin calefactorium, from Latin calefacere ("to make warm"), from calēre ("to be warm") + facere ("to make"). Unlike a refectory, which serves the body with food, or a warming pan, a purely utilitarian domestic tool, the calefactory ministers to a more profound chill. It is the grudging concession of stone architecture to human frailty: the single hearth in a vaulted hall where monks thaw their ink-stiffened fingers; the small, perforated brass globe passed before the Eucharist; the fugitive circle of heat in an ascetic existence—a modest, material bulwark against the cold, both of climate and of spirit.