mausoleum

plural mausoleums · plural mausolea · alternative obsolete mausolæum

1. A large stately tomb or a building housing such a tomb or several tombs.

   Holonym: cemetery

   1 more example

   His embalmed corpse, exhibited to this day in the mausoleum in Moscow, aptly symbolizes the new order which, he promised, was soon to embrace all mankind.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 491

2. broadlyA gloomy, usually large room or building.

   As Amazon reaches maximum ubiquity in our lives (“Alexa, play Led Zeppelin”), as online shopping turns malls into mausoleums, it’s been illuminating to see exactly how a package makes the final leg of its journey.

   2018 December 25, Austin Murphy, “I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon.”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 03 Feb 2019

alternative Mausoleon · alternative Mausoleion

1. The grand tomb built around 353–351 BCE at Halicarnassus for Mausolus, a ruler of Caria and satrap of the Achaemenid Empire; one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

   Because of its status as a wonder of the world, the Mausoleum was admired by Vitruvius and Strabo and described with measurements by the elder Pliny.

   2007, Edmund Thomas, Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age, page 180

   2 more examples

   Phileus, an eminent Ionian architect, built the Mausoleum, in conjunction with Satyrus, and the temple of Athena Polias, at Priene. The date of the erection of the Mausoleum was soon after B.C. 353, the year in which Mausolus died; that of the temple at Priene must have been about 20 years later.

   1872, William Smith, “Phileus”, in A Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology, and Geography, London, page 559

   Even when painted, marble retains its capacity to absorb and retransmit light, so that the sculptures of a monument like the Mausoleum would have been characterized by a kind of living glow even in their polychromy. The use of marble quite literally lent an added lustre to the deeds of Mausolus and his ancestors which it celebrated.

   2013, Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell, page 79