Holy of Holies

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

A place or thing considered most sacred or private

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

nơi hoặc điều được coi là thiêng liêng nhất hoặc riêng tư nhất

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: innermost sanctum of the Temple in Jerusalem
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

‘ Oh, Mr Varna, I'm so sorry … ’ she stuttered, even more horrified by her gaffe than she had been about letting a strange woman push her way into the holy of holies.
I knocked eventually on the door of the horse - car and, after inspection and formalities that would have done an Iron Curtain country proud, was admitted again by Ms Brown to the holy of holies.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “Holy of Holies” mean?

A place or thing considered most sacred or private Literally: innermost sanctum of the Temple in Jerusalem

Is “Holy of Holies” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.