1. A subordinate place of worship; as, (a) a small church, often a private foundation, as for a memorial; (b) a small building attached to a church; (c) a room or recess in a church, containing an altar.
Note: In Catholic churches, and also in cathedrals and abbey churches, chapels are usually annexed in the recesses on the sides of the aisles. Gwilt.
2. A place of worship not connected with a church; as, the chapel of a palace, hospital, or prison.
3. In England, a place of worship used by dissenters from the Established Church; a meetinghouse.
4. A choir of singers, or an orchastra, attached to the court of a prince or nobleman.
5. (Print.) (a) A printing office, said to be so called because printing was first carried on in England in a chapel near Westminster Abbey. (b) An association of workmen in a printing office. Chapel of ease. (a) A chapel or dependent church built for the ease or a accommodation of an increasing parish, or for parishioners who live at a distance from the principal church. (b) A privy. (Law) — Chapel master, a director of music in a chapel; the director of a court or orchestra. — To build a chapel (Naut.), to chapel a ship. See Chapel, v. t., 2. — To hold a chapel, to have a meeting of the men employed in a printing office, for the purpose of considering questions affecting their interests.
CHAPEL
Chap"el, v. t.
1. To deposit or inter in a chapel; to enshrine. [Obs.] Beau. & Fl.
2. (Naut.)
Defn: To cause (a ship taken aback in a light breeze) so to turn or make a circuit as to recover, without bracing the yards, the same tack on which she had been sailing.