Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to a method of establishing a new colony, found in certain social insects, in which a queen (in ants) or a queen and king pair (in termites) sequesters itself in a small chamber and hatches the first generation of workers, nourishing them primarily on stored body fat.
- adjective Of or relating to a claustrum, especially of the brain.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Relating to a cloister; cloistral.
- Resembling a religious house in its seclusion; cloister-like; secluded.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Cloistral.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Of or pertaining to a
cloister . - adjective Having
cloisters ;cloistered .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The site of the monastery usually determined the layout of the monastic buildings, whereas the requirements of plumbing and outer walls as well as gardens molded the finished claustral precinct.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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However, from drawings, textual references, and archeology, we can reconstruct some aspects of the claustral buildings from the two houses of Unterlinden and St. Katharinenthal.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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Except for the choir and the sacristy, it was the only place that allowed some frequency of male entry. 80 The constitutions deal at some length with the possible necessity of male entrance into the female environment of the claustral buildings.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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In Seduction and Betrayal, for example, she located Virginia Woolf's special and claustral narrowness, her aggravated femininity, less in her situation as a woman than in the aestheticism and androgyny of Bloomsbury.
On Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Didion, Joan 2008
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How should he draw back — this creature, all sensation, all enjoyment of life, tired of the monotony of existence in a country town, weary of poverty, harassed by enforced continence, impatient of the claustral life of the Rue de Cluny, of toiling without reward?
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Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little women, with pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral calm of the provinces and the habits of a virtuous life, keep their youth until they are past forty.
Eug�nie Grandet 2007
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All the windows look on the street; the whole dwelling, in claustral fashion, is divided into rooms or cells of equal size, all opening upon a long corridor dimly lit with borrowed lights.
Gobseck 2007
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All the windows look on the street; the whole dwelling, in claustral fashion, is divided into rooms or cells of equal size, all opening upon a long corridor dimly lit with borrowed lights.
Gobseck 2007
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Women will pass me lightly, women with open and inviting faces, but they will not attract me, and there will come beautiful women, women with that touch of claustral preoccupation which forbids the thought of any near approach.
A Modern Utopia Herbert George 2006
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Good – Conscience; he is an austere, unearthly friend, whom maybe Torquemada knew; and the folds of his raiment are not merely claustral, but have something of the horror of the pall.
Lay Morals 2005
tallpaul commented on the word claustral
Found in the poem 'Sea-Fret' by Robert Robertson from his collection Swithering.
'Shell cannisters gleam
bluntly in the claustral light'.
December 6, 2006