Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A hallowed or holy place.
- noun A chapel for seafarers.
- noun Chiefly British A Nonconformist chapel, especially a Baptist or Methodist one.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A hallowed spot.
- noun A name sometimes applied to a place of worship in England, especially to a dissenting chapel.
- noun A church or chapel for seamen, whether located on shore or, as is often the case, afloat in a harbor.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A place of worship; a hallowed spot.
- noun engraving A chapel for dissenters.
- noun A house of worship for seamen.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
holy place. - noun A
chapel , especially one forsailors .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a house of worship (especially one for sailors)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word bethel.
Examples
-
The house was called bethel agreeable to the prayer that was made.
-
Note: I thought "bethel" was the word for house in Hebrew - what is this Jeru stuff?
Archive 2008-03-01 Jan 2008
-
She sprang from the bed and hurriedly rearranged the bethel on her bedspread.
Sin in Soul's Kitchen Andrew Oye 2009
-
She will send you a letter if you send her a postcard. note: postcard deal still good, let me know if you'd like a reply: po box 81 bethel vt 05032
-
There is a bethel, or floating "seaman's chapel," anchored in the
Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas W. Hastings Macaulay
-
BAETYLUS (Gr. [Greek: baitulos, baitulion]), a word of Semitic origin (= bethel) denoting a sacred stone, which was supposed to be endowed with life.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" Various
-
Page 8 and so our house for years was a real "bethel."
My Own Life Story Sterling Nelson 1924
-
They had matched each other in number since the French admiral had exiled the British missionary-consul, and compelled the queen to erect a papal church for every bethel.
Mystic Isles of the South Seas. Frederick O'Brien 1900
-
A stone might be a/bît îli/or bethel -- a "house of god," and almost invested with the status of a living thing, but that does not prove that the Babylonians thought of every stone as being endowed with life, even in prehistoric times.
The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Theophilus Goldridge Pinches 1895
-
Before breakfast, another blast for family and private prayer; and then every tent became, in camp language, "a bethel of struggling Jacobs and prevailing Israels," every tree "an altar;" and every grove "a secret closet;" till the air all became religious words and phrases, and vocal with "Amens."
The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) Various 1887
knitandpurl commented on the word bethel
"By the time I was eleven I could read and write. Mr. Jamrach said he needed his boys to be able to write things down and read off lists. I was quick. Ma was impressed. "You clever boy, Jaf," she said when I read the posters plastered outside the seamen's bethel."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 40 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
January 9, 2012