Meanings
plural cellarages
- countableuncountableThe space or storerooms of a cellar.
Ha, ha, boy, say’st thou so? Art thou there, truepenny? Come on! You hear this fellow in the cellarage. Consent to swear.
c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]4 more examples
The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall.
1854, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLCAmong the excluding matters there was, for one, the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his daughter, which took him so much unawares that, though it did not make him absolutely forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrust Giles’s image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain.
1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, chapter 6, in The Woodlanders […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLCThe sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout.
1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 1, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLCIn the masques of Elizabethan and early Stuart times, divine descents and irruptions of demons from the cellarage were a commonplace […]
1956, Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell, London: Chatto & Windus, Appendix III - countableuncountableA fee charged for storing goods in a cellar.
Origin
- Latincelērāgium, cellārāgium
- Middle Frenchcelerage, celeraige, cellerage, sceleraige
- Englishcellarage
From cellar + -age. In the fee sense, apparently after either Middle French celerage, celeraige, cellerage, sceleraige or Latin celērāgium, cellārāgium.
More words from Middle French, Latin
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Czech sklepení
- sklepeníspace or storerooms of a cellar
Finnish kellarivarasto, kellaritila
- kellarivarastospace or storerooms of a cellar
- kellaritilaspace or storerooms of a cellar
Cite this entry
cellarage. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cellarage
“cellarage.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cellarage. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cellarage,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cellarage.
Source: cellarage on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.