The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sepulcher \Sep"ul*cher\, Sepulchre \Sep"ul*chre\, n. [OE. sepulcre, OF. sepulcre, F. s['e]pulcre, fr. L. sepulcrum, sepulchrum, fr. sepelire to bury.] The place in which the dead body of a human being is interred, or a place set apart for that purpose; a grave; a tomb.
The stony entrance of this sepulcher.
--Shak.
The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early,
when it was yet dark, unto the sepulcher.
--John xx. 1.
A whited sepulcher. Fig.: Any person who is fair outwardly
but unclean or vile within. See
--Matt. xxiii. 27.
Usage examples of "a whited sepulcher".
In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulcher.
It is wonderful what insight the author of the play must have had when he planned the scene where his servant, the workman in love with his work, tells the worldly minded Churchman, who is full of platitudes and as vile as a whited sepulcher, of the temple which he, the workman, built.
Below him the desert lay like a whited sepulcher cut by the dark ribbon of the interstate highway.
The instincts of her girlhood, surviving, made a whited sepulcher of her present life.