Pigeon house . . . of the dead!

Sorry for the lack of posts today, dear reader. I spent most of the day transcribing my Pfizer interview from Tuesday: 65 minutes on the digital recorder added up to 4,000 words, and that’s after I elided some sections that I know I can’t run in the magazine.

Anyway, I’m settling in to read, and just came across a word I’d never encountered before, which I figure I’ll share with you:

columbarium

n. (pl. -baria) a room or building with niches for funeral urns to be stored. a niche to hold a funeral urn. a stone wall or walk within a garden for burial of funeral urns, esp. attached to a church. Origin: mid 18th cent.: from Latin, literally ‘pigeon house’.