chapel

Etymology

From Middle English chapele, chapel, from Old French chapele, from Late Latin cappella (“little cloak; chapel”), diminutive of cappa (“cloak, cape”). Doublet of capelle. (printing office): Said to be because printing was first carried on in England in a chapel near Westminster Abbey.

noun

1. (especially Christianity) A 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.
3. A funeral home, or a room in one for holding funeral services.
4. (UK) A trade union branch in printing or journalism.
5. A printing office.
6. A choir of singers, or an orchestra, attached to the court of a prince or nobleman.

adj

1. (Wales) Describing a person who attends a nonconformist chapel.
   The village butcher is chapel.

verb

1. (nautical, transitive) To 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. (obsolete, transitive) To deposit or inter in a chapel; to enshrine.