Coenaculum

/koʊɛˈnækjələm/ noun

Definition

A dining room or eating chamber, particularly in ancient Roman houses; also refers to a literary work or collection of writings.

Etymology

From Latin coena (dinner, meal) + -culum (diminutive suffix). In medieval Latin, it also came to mean a collection or miscellany of written works.

Kelly Says

The word has a double life—Roman archaeologists use it for actual dining rooms, but medieval scholars used it for collections of writings, probably because a good book collection fed your mind like a coenaculum fed your body.

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