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’.
Not only have I regularly heard the word since I was young, I have spent time in the columbarium in my own church – very peaceful, if cool and damp. This is what you get when the Episcopal Church is the family business for multiple generations.