reliquary means A container to hold or display religious relics. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 83 out of 100.
reliquary is pronounced /ˈɹɛlɪ(ˌ)kwɛɹi/.
Why “reliquary” is a great word
RELIQUARY — [Noun] A container, often elaborately crafted, used to hold and display sacred relics. From the Middle French reliquaire, from Late Latin reliquiarium, from Latin rēliquia ("remains, relic"), from reliquus ("left behind, remaining"), from relinquō ("to leave behind"). First attested in English in the 1650s. Unlike a shrine—a fixed place for devotion—or a phylactery—a box for scriptural texts worn in prayer—a reliquary is a portable architecture for saintly remains. It is a miniature cathedral in silver cradling a finger bone, a gilded monstrance framing a splinter of the True Cross, a simple locket holding a pinch of earth from a martyr's tomb—each a crafted argument against oblivion, making tangible the human ache to touch the vanished.
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French reliquaire (modern French reliquaire), from Late Latin reliquiarium, from rēliquia (“a relic”) (English relic), noun use of reliquus (“abandoned, left behind, relict”), from relinquō (“to relinquish”), from re- (“again”) and linquō (“to leave”), from Proto-Indo-European *leikʷ-.
noun
- A container to hold or display religious relics.““… There is an ivory virgin of the fourteenth century. I once found a buyer for that piece, but the old boy would not sell it.[…]The other piece—the one that concerns us—is known as the Borgia reliquary.””
- An object that sustains the memory of past people or events.
- A person who owes a balance.