Home › Glossary › Letter T

Tabernacle

Architecture
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A tabernacle is a small sacred receptacle or shrine, often for religious objects. It can symbolize concentrated holiness or guarded remembrance.

Detailed Definition
Architectural tabernacles create a protected place for an object believed to hold special spiritual significance. In poetry, the term can frame a small thing as intensely charged: a letter, photograph, bone, key, or fragment of cloth. Its scale creates a contrast between physical smallness and emotional magnitude. A poem may build a tabernacle around an ordinary relic to show how grief and devotion transform matter.
Example
Example in poetry:
“A small tabernacle in the wall held one candle and a darkness deeper than prayer”; A poet can use an architectural tabernacle, a niche or shrine-like enclosure, to frame an object of devotion; “Inside the tabernacle, the saint’s painted eyes watched the empty aisle” gives a church poem a focused visual center; In a poem of remembrance, a tabernacle can become a metaphor for the mind’s protected chamber of grief
Additional Notes
Architecturally, a tabernacle is a small shrine or sacred enclosure, often designed to protect a revered object. In poetry, it can make memory, relics, names, or grief feel guarded and concentrated. Its small scale can intensify rather than reduce its spiritual force.
Other Meanings of “Tabernacle”
Also Known As
Aedicule
Skip to main content