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Glite Dictionary
⛪ A church room 👥 A church committee
vestry

vestry

1 9.3
A room in a church where religious clothes and items are kept and people meet
  • noun
  • /ˈvɛstri/
translation icon : sacristía
  • Gumbel's description of the antics that went on in the vestry of HTB after their invocation of the Spirit seems to me to bear no resemblance at all to what happened on the day of Pentecost.

Examples

  • "The parish records are kept in a locked cabinet in the vestry," Telemachus explained as they entered the musty portal.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • After Botha's Hall comes the Vestry, Catacombs, Temple, and Crypt.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • - His Grace is in the vestry... ...preparing for the evening service.

    The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

  • Well, I'm glad it's going to be A quiet wedding in the vestry house.

    Five Star Final (1931)

  • The vestry...

    Fiction book (1999)

  • It was only after she was inside that Julia recognized the vestry of a church.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • I can see your poor Aunt Connie now, coughing her heart out in the vestry.

    This Happy Breed (1944)

  • Now, in the vestry hall, the Girl Scouts were learning knots, though Mrs. Freedman said, "What do they need with knots?"

    Fiction book (2002)

  • There's gold in them thar long-gone fumbles in the vestry—some of them, indeed, so long gone that the alleged offender is likely to be dead and unable to present his side of the story.

    Blog text (1)

  • The church members gathered in the vestry to discuss plans for the upcoming charity event.

Synonyms

sacristy
vsvestry
4 9.9

A church room where the priest keeps and prepares robes and other things for services

is used more as a meeting room rather than mainly for clergy preparation

Surface Forms

vestry singular
vestries plural

Morphology

vestry = vestment (semi-transparent) = vest + ry

Formally built from the clothing-related base ('vest'/'vestment') plus the place/collective suffix '-ry', but the meaning is specialised to church use and may not be obvious to all learners.

Etymology

Vestry comes from the Latin vestis, meaning 'clothes', and it first named the church room where priests kept their vestments or special clothes. So a vestry is the place in a church for storing sacred clothes and for quiet preparation before a service.