1. A place or container where something can be stored: The city requires a big repository for waste materials.

A vault or safe is considered to be the most secure repository for valuable possessions; such as, jewelry or money.

Some books are great repositories of knowledge and even wisdom.

2. A location where a natural resource is available: There are some countries that have repositories of salt which are being processed for human use.

There are simply too many areas in the world that desperately need sufficient repositories of water for their people, animals, and all kinds of plants.

Here are a few examples of repositories: warehouses, vaults, storerooms, banks, reservoirs, libraries, museums, web sites, natural resources, etc.

3. Etymology: from Latin reposit-, "a stand on which food is stored"; from reponere, "to put away, to store"; from re-, "back, away" + ponere, "to put, to place." © ALL rights are reserved.
© ALL rights are reserved.

Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.

1. A burial place; especially, one found or made in a rock or solidly built of stone; a tomb; a vault.
2. A receptacle for sacred relics; especially, in an altar slab.
3. A vault in which a corpse is buried.

A mined facility for the disposal of radioactive waste, using waste packages and the natural geological formations as barriers to provide waste isolation: The deep geological repository idea involves the encapsulation of used nuclear fuel in long-term engineered casks which are placed and sealed within excavated rooms in a geological formation at a determined depth of 500 to 1000 meters below the Earth's surface.

A geological repository involves the construction of a vault within a stable, low permeability bedrock using conventional mining techniques. The bedrock and other engineered barriers are supposed to provide ecological safety over an extended time.