Definition of "cloister" []

• A covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle. (noun)
• A place, especially a monastery or convent, devoted to religious seclusion. (noun)
• Life in a monastery or convent. (noun)
• A secluded, quiet place. (noun)
• To shut away from the world in or as if in a cloister; seclude. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "IV. iii.280 (107,1) [He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister] I know not that _cloister_, though it may etymologically signify _any_"
• "Her design style was said to be greatly influenced by the days in cloister:"
• "When he thought of the great Mongibello that he never would see, and of Donna Elisa, who would never come again, and of the school, and of the shut-in cloister garden, and of a whole restricted life!"