mortuary means of or relating to death or a funeral; funereal. It carries an Arena rating of 1606, earned across 75 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, mortuary ranks #1,324 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #1,932 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #2,567 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #3,853 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words.
mortuary is pronounced /ˈmɔɹt͡ʃəˌwɛɹi/.
Why “mortuary” is a great word
MORTUARY — [Adjective, Noun] Of or relating to death or burial; a place where dead bodies are kept prior to burial or cremation. From Middle English mortuary, from Anglo-Norman mortuarie ("gift to a parish priest from a deceased parishioner"), from Medieval Latin mortuārium ("receptacle for the dead; mortuary"), neuter form of mortuārius ("of or pertaining to the dead"), from Latin mortuus ("dead"), perfect passive participle of morī ("to die"). Unlike a "morgue," which implies clinical investigation and legal custody, or a "funeral home," which orchestrates the ceremonial theater of mourning, a mortuary is the quiet, functional core: the facility of preparation. It is the chill of stainless steel, the scent of antiseptic lilies failing to mask a subtler sweetness, and the muted hum of refrigeration maintaining a solemn stasis. This is the architecture of the interval, where the physical fact of absence is made professionally tangible.
Etymology
From Middle English mortuary, from Anglo-Norman mortuarie (“gift to a parish priest from a deceased parishioner”), from Medieval Latin mortuārium (“receptacle for the dead; mortuary”), neuter form of mortuārius (“of or pertaining to the dead”), from Latin mortuus, perfect passive participle of morior (“to die”).
adj
- Of or relating to death or a funeral; funereal.e.g.“The leftwise action aims at what drifts out of the nunka domain of the nefarious. Similarly for mortuary arrangements, what is leftwise is more momentous than what is rightwise.” — 2006, Arne Røkkum, Nature, ritual, and society in Japan's Ryukyu Islands, page 151:
noun
- A place where dead bodies are stored prior to burial or cremation; broadly, synonym of funeral home.e.g.“It was anciently usual to bring the mortuary to church along with the corpse when it came to be buried” — 1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC:
- A sort of ecclesiastical heriot, a customary gift claimed by, and due to, the minister of a parish on the death of a parishioner.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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