iconostasis

noun

ico·​nos·​ta·​sis ˌī-kə-ˈnä-stə-səs  (ˌ)ī-ˈkä-nə-ˌstä-səs 

plural iconostases ˌī-kə-ˈnä-stə-ˌsēz 

(ˌ)ī-ˈkä-nə-ˌstä-

: a screen or partition with doors and tiers of icons that separates the bema from the nave in Eastern churches

Examples of iconostasis in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In Greece, the country’s police retrieved forty-three ancient amphorae through a pair of investigations, and in Romania, authorities rescued a wooden iconostasis dating from the nineteenth century that had been taken from a church and offered for sale online. —News Desk, Artforum, 23 July 2024

Additionally Romanian Police recovered a 19th-century wooden iconostasis stolen from a church and sold online. —Daniel Cassady, ARTnews.com, 22 July 2024

Sinuously curving baseboards in an upstairs room, a seamless passage from wall to ceiling in the complicated stairwell, the hinges for the heavy stone doors of the iconostasis — if there was a standard way to execute each of these items, the architects specified another. —Curbed, 6 Dec. 2022

Originally, the iconostasis hung inside a wooden church at the Manyava Orthodox Monastery in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, in what was then Polish Galicia. —Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 May 2022

A few meters away, a group walked down the majestic main staircase carrying a giant piece of sacred art, the 18th century Bohorodchany iconostasis. —Bernat Armangué, USA TODAY, 7 Mar. 2022

Word History

Etymology

alteration (probably by assimilation to -stasis) of Middle Greek eikonostásion, going back to late Greek, "shrine," from eikono- icono- + -stasion "resting place, stand," derivative of Greek -stasis -stasis

First Known Use

1833, in the meaning defined above