Chapel

//ˈt͡ʃæp.əl// adj, name, noun, verb

adj, name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A place of worship, smaller than or subordinate to a church. especially
  2. 2
    a service conducted in a place of worship that has its own altar wordnet
  3. 3
    A place of worship in another building or within a civil institution such as a larger church, airport, prison, monastery, school, etc.; often primarily for private prayer.

    "One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”"

  4. 4
    a place of worship that has its own altar wordnet
  5. 5
    A place of worship of a denomination not in conformity with the Church of England, usually Protestant; for example, of Nonconformist or Dissenter congregations. UK
Show 4 more definitions
  1. 6
    A funeral home, or a room in one for holding funeral services.
  2. 7
    A trade union branch in printing or journalism. UK
  3. 8
    A printing office.
  4. 9
    A choir of singers, or an orchestra, attached to the court of a prince or nobleman.
Verb
  1. 1
    To cause (a ship taken aback in a light breeze) to turn or make a circuit so as to recover, without bracing the yards, the same tack on which she had been sailing. transitive
  2. 2
    To deposit or inter in a chapel; to enshrine. obsolete, transitive

    "give us the bones Of our dead kings, that we may chapel them!"

Adjective
  1. 1
    Describing a person who attends a nonconformist chapel. Wales, not-comparable

    "The village butcher is chapel."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
amphitheaterarenaassembly hallauditoriumchantrychapel of ease

Example

More examples

"So that Michelangelo might paint certain figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so that Shakespeare might write certain speeches and Keats his poems, it seemed to me worthwhile that countless millions should have lived and suffered and died."

Etymology

From Middle English chapele, chapel, from Old French chapele, from Late Latin cappella (“little cloak; chapel”), diminutive of cappa (“cloak, cape”). Doublet of capelle. (printing office): Said to be because printing was first carried on in England in a chapel near Westminster Abbey.

Related phrases

Chapel AllertonChapel BramptonChapel ChorltonChapel LawnChapel MiltonChapel of EaseChapel-en-le-FrithChapel-le-DaleHeaton ChapelHolmes ChapelLady chapelSt John's Chapel

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.