How to Use reliquary in a Sentence

reliquary

noun
  • Older fans reached out to touch it, like pilgrims at a reliquary.
    Bill Livingston, cleveland.com, 5 Aug. 2017
  • Sunga lifted the lid off one of the wooden reliquaries, rotten with age, and three skulls peered out at us.
    Stanley Stewart, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 May 2020
  • One of the show’s earliest pieces, installed on the second floor, is, in effect, a civil rights era reliquary.
    New York Times, 18 Feb. 2021
  • To declare her dedication to the Catholic faith, Mary wore a reliquary and a cross owned by her Spanish mother.
    Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Oct. 2022
  • Like tiny reliquaries, daguerreotypes kept safe the image of one’s beloved.
    Nancy West, The Atlantic, 19 July 2017
  • To Christians, Jerusalem is a giant walk-through reliquary of Jesus’ life and death, with every street, every stone, soaked in his aura.
    Holland Cotter, New York Times, 22 Sep. 2016
  • Young Palestinian scouts played bagpipes and the crowd snapped pictures as a clergyman held the silver reliquary and marched toward the church.
    Washington Post, 1 Dec. 2019
  • Also destroyed were the sculptures adorning the doorways, and the reliquaries and bronze statues inside.
    National Geographic, 15 Apr. 2019
  • Jimmy ran his place like a reliquary, filling his hole in the wall with framed photographs of fellow pugilists and pasting snapshots of patrons on the bartop.
    Washington Post, 16 Nov. 2021
  • One personal reliquary housed at the British Museum, dated to 1340, is made from gold, amethyst, rock crystal, and enamel.
    Katy Kelleher, Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
  • This knee-high reliquary made of wood pegs, split cane, vegetable fiber, and cloth was once used to house specific ancestral spirits, researchers think.
    Nick Roll, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 Aug. 2021
  • While the pitch clock, bigger bases and limited pickoff throws are all new rules the Rangers, and all of baseball, must adjust to, there are two areas in which Bochy excelled that are now stored in the reliquary of rule changes.
    Dallas News, 15 Feb. 2023
  • Indeed, the elaborate gold and silver reliquary, a container for holy lyrics, has quite the backstory.
    Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 29 Apr. 2021
  • His small-scale art works often invoke Catholic imagery and can suggest reliquaries.
    Arthur Lubow, New York Times, 2 Aug. 2019
  • The reliquary was apparently stolen Friday night from the basilica of Castelnuovo Don Bosco, so named for the town’s most famous son.
    Associated Press, Washington Post, 3 June 2017
  • The Eutaw Street corridor The walkway that stretches between the Warehouse and the stadium is both a thoroughfare and a reliquary of home run history.
    Peter Schmuck, baltimoresun.com, 18 Aug. 2017
  • According to the Catholic publication Crux, the reliquary containing the fragment was also stolen.
    Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 8 June 2017
  • Elevator cabs clad in backlit slabs of rose and green onyx suggest medieval reliquaries.
    Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, 15 June 2018
  • The head of a bishop’s staff, a reliquary, and small sculptures depicting religious figures are among the hundreds of walrus ivory artifacts that have been found at medieval sites across Europe.
    Zach Zorich, Discover Magazine, 10 Feb. 2021
  • Among the 13 vibrant paintings, a reliquary from the Gardner’s collection is reunited with three from Florence, which together depict the Virgin Mary’s life.
    BostonGlobe.com, 30 Mar. 2018
  • And finally, out-glitzing everything else, one of the most spectacular reliquaries of the European Middle Ages is here.
    Holland Cotter, New York Times, 22 Sep. 2016
  • One reliquary grouping assembles a few of his portable possessions: his camera, some music tapes.
    Holland Cotter, New York Times, 25 Nov. 2022
  • Elsewhere, King Stephen’s mummified right hand (it was found uncorrupted after his death and is regarded as a holy relic) was being readied to go on parade in its jeweled reliquary.
    Jacob Mikanowski, Harper's magazine, 21 July 2019
  • According to the Heritage Science paper, in the late 12th century the relics had been taken from an old marble reliquary, and the 19th century they were placed in a wooden box sculpted to resemble an old Christian sarcophagus, or tomb.
    Rebecca Coffey, Forbes, 3 Mar. 2021
  • Another powerful work associated with Saint Sebastian is a 1484 German monstrance, a gilded silver and rock crystal reliquary believed to contain a sliver of bone from the saint’s body.
    Steven Litt, cleveland, 26 Apr. 2020
  • All four were designed as free-standing reliquaries and encased in cabinet-like frames — since removed or replaced — embedded with sacred materials.
    New York Times, 16 May 2018
  • Those busts showcased pieces from a bookish collection that included earrings of miniature bejeweled reliquaries and golden books, the open pages engraved with a poem in almost miraculously tiny lettering.
    Hamish Bowles, Vogue, 9 Apr. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'reliquary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: