Sanctuary | Vocabulary

0:00- [David] It's all gonna be okay. wordsmiths. We're approaching a sanctuary. This is a peaceful video about a peaceful word. Sanct-ohh-air-ee. It's a noun. It means a place to hide and be safe, a place of protection for humans or animals. Maybe you've heard of an elephant sanctuary, or a whale sanctuary.

0:22These are protected places for those animals to live safely. I love the components of this word. It's from Latin, and we can break it down into two parts. "Sanct" comes from the Latin (speaks Latin) meaning holy. A sanctuary is literally a holy place, like a room intended for worship, but its meaning has expanded beyond just that use.

0:41And, "ary" is a piece of Latin that makes nouns. It means a place for, or a person for. So, a sanctuary is a place for holiness, a church, classically, where you could hide out from the law that was sanctuary. What words can you think of that contain either of these elements, "sanct" or "ary?"

1:01I'll give you 10 seconds of very chill, pleasant music, and meet you back here, okay? Let's go. (chill electronic music) Here are three words I thought of, "library, right? A place for books. "Sanctify," to make something holy, to bless it. I just took that suffix that makes verbs, "ify," I-F-Y, and attached it to Sanct, right, holy-making, and sanction, which is a kind of official decree.

1:37It used to be specifically a church decree, but now it can be used in a variety of ways. It might mean that something is officially approved, like a school sanctioned event, or it might mean a penalty for breaking a law or a rule, like sanctions against a company for doing something illegal.

1:55Let's use sanctuary in a sentence or two. Here we can see it as a literal, safe place. "Jean Baptiste realized that the shipwreck had become an artificial reef, a sanctuary for eels and seahorses." The sea creatures lived there, they're protected there. It's their habitat.

2:12But, we can also use the word in a more figurative sense. "Ana Maria saw the library as her sanctuary. She could wall herself up with books, and block out the rest of the world." Ana Maria doesn't live in the library, it's a place where she feels safe. She can make a little book fortress.

2:28And, in so doing, feel protected. I hope that you can find a sanctuary in the things you love, wordsmiths, whether it's books, or eels, or shipwrecks. I think those are the three options, right? You can learn anything, David out.