censer

UK/ˈsɛn.sə/US/ˈsɛn.sɚ/

nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Other forms: censers

A censer is a container in which incense is burnt. Swing the censer.

It hangs on chains so it can be swung, which spreads the smoke and keeps the charcoal alight. The one in Santiago de Compostela is so large it takes eight men to swing it.

Definitions of censer

1nouncenserA container in which incense is burnt.C2
“The censer went up the aisle ahead of everybody else.”

censer is a container.

Where it comes from

Old French encensier comes from encens, incense, from Latin incendere, to set alight.

Old French
encensier
Anglo-Norman
censier
Middle English
censer
English, today
censer

Built from

encens · Old French — incense

Middle English censer, from Anglo-Norman censier, from Old French encensier, from encens (“incense”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

censer in the wild

A censer, incense burner, perfume burner or pastille burner is a vessel made for burning incense or perfume in some solid form.
Censer
In many cultures, burning incense has spiritual and religious connotations, and this influences the design and decoration of the censer.
Censer
A thymiaterion is a type of censer or incense burner.
Thymiaterion
The term has also come to refer to the censers of other peoples of the ancient world, such as the Phoenicians and Etruscans.
Thymiaterion
The dabqaad (Somali for "fire raiser"), also known as girgire, is a Somali incense burner, or censer.
Dabqaad

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the encens family

incense

censer — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

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