claustral

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Related to claustral: haet, Intimidatory, splurge

claus·tral

(klô′strəl)

adj.

1. 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.

2. Of or relating to a claustrum, especially of the brain.

3. Variant of cloistral.

[Latin claustrum, bar, barrier, enclosed place; see cloister + -al.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

claustral

(ˈklɔːstrəl)

adj

(Ecclesiastical Terms) a less common variant of cloistral

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

claus•tral

(ˈklɔ strəl)

adj.

cloistral; cloisterlike.

[1400–50; late Middle English < Late Latin claustrālis=claustr(um) bolt, barrier (claud(ere) to close, shut + -trum instrumental suffix) + -ālis -al ¹]

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cloistral

References in periodicals archive ?

Zweig's novella shares the claustral closeness of Isaac Dinesen's Deluge at Nordenay, a Chinese box of a novella set in mid-nineteenth century Denmark.

Notes on the novella

Did he fight through those narrowing, claustral narrative tunnels, because he knew on the other side there was something clear, simple, a big, airy, light-filled room with a few indecipherable objects?

Gilbert Sorrentino's Days Off

The body on the white slab remained in its claustral peace, ignominiously still as the pathologist in his salmon-coloured rubber gloves wielded his little silver scalpel and talked to the students.

Poet in a White Coat: In this excerpt from his acceptance speech upon becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, doctor-writer Dannie Abse considers how medicine and poetry converge and traces their intersections in his own life and work