ark

Noun

1. A large box with a flat lid.
   • Then said he, "Your child is at home in the inner bedroom in a new cradle behind the ark." - 1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 228:
2. The ship built by Noah to save his family and a collection of animals from the deluge; Noah's ark.
   • In the midrash about Noah it says that Noah had a stone which, when held up in the darkness of the ark, would change color when the sun was shining outside. - 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take...
3. Something affording protection; safety, shelter, refuge.
   • the Ark of Bukhara
4. The body as a vessel.
   • Like her I go; I cannot stay; ⁠I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind, And leave the cliffs, and haste away […] - 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward...
5. A spacious type of boat with a flat bottom.
   • Some seventy or seventy-five arks were permanently located on McLeod's Lake and between 110 and 125 people lived in them. - 1990, Lou Sullivan, chapter 7, in From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland, page 76:
6. The Ark of the Covenant.
7. A decorated cabinet at the front of a synagogue, in which Torah scrolls are kept.