Pl. -ia. [L. (neut. of columbārius: see prec. and -ARIUM), pigeon-house, also urn-sepulchre, mortise, etc.]
1. A pigeon-house, dove-cote; a pigeon-hole.
1881. J. Grant, Cameronians, I. ii. 22. The dove-cot … was built in the form of an enormous beehive … full of columbaria for the pigeons.
2. Rom. Antiq. A subterranean sepulchre, having in its walls niches or holes for cinerary urns; also one of these niches or recesses.
1846. C. Maitland, Ch. in Catacombs, 39. The niches for these, disposed round the walls and central supports, give the whole chamber the appearance of a dove-cote, whence its name of columbarium.
1859. J. C. Hobhouse (Ld. Broughton), Italy, I. 326. Some less illustrious ashes have been preserved … in the columbaria of the two families.
1860. Hawthorne, Marb. Faun, II. xxiv. 233. Ambitious of everlasting remembrance, as they were, the slumberers might just as well have gone quietly to rest, each in his pigeon-hole of a columbaria.
1878. Bosw. Smith, Carthage, 416. Some of the sepulchral chambers … contain as many as ten niches, or columbaria, hewn out of the solid limestone.
3. A hole left in a wall for the insertion of the end of a beam.
1864. in Webster: and in later Dicts.
