chapel

plural chapels

1. especiallyChristianityA place of worship, smaller than or subordinate to a church.
2. 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.”

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter III, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

3. UKA place of worship of a denomination not in conformity with the Church of England, usually Protestant; for example, of Nonconformist or Dissenter congregations.
4. A funeral home, or a room in one for holding funeral services.

   Synonyms: mortuary chapel

5. UKA trade union branch in printing or journalism.
6. A printing office.
7. A choir of singers, or an orchestra, attached to the court of a prince or nobleman.

1. Walesnot comparableDescribing a person who attends a nonconformist chapel.

   The village butcher is chapel.

present singular third person chapels · US participle present chapeling · UK participle present chapelling · US participle past chapeled · US past chapeled · UK participle past chapelled · UK past chapelled

1. transitivenauticalTo 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.
2. obsoletetransitiveTo deposit or inter in a chapel; to enshrine.

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

   1613–1614, William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, “The Two Noble Kinsmen”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

plural Chapels

1. A surname.