seraglio

• serraglio

From Italian serraglio, from Vulgar Latin *serrāculum, from a late form of Latin serāre (“lock up, close”), from sera (“lock, bolt”). The Italian word was used (because of phonetic similarity) to translate Turkish saray (palace). Compare serai, serail.

• (US) IPA^(key): /səˈɹæljoʊ/, /səˈɹæɡliːoʊ/

seraglio (plural seraglios)

1. A palace of a sultan.
   1. The palace of the Grand Seignior in Constantinople.
      • 1749, Henry Fielding, chapter X, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book V:

        At these words he started up, and beheld—not his Sophia—no, nor a Circassian maid richly and elegantly attired for the grand Signior's seraglio.

2. (by figurative extension) A profligate or decadent residence of a rich person.
   • 1988, Mark Reutter, Sparrows Point: Making Steel, Summit Books/Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, pages 287–288:

     In 1936 [Charles] Schwab's agents approached the La Guardia administration in New York, hoping to interest the city in buying his mansion for the official residence of the mayor. […] But Fiorello La Guardia took great pride in the fact that he lived in a modest walkup in Lower New York. He ridiculed the idea of moving into the robber baron's seraglio, telling newsmen that the city much preferred having the tax revenue from the mansion.

3. The sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines (odalisques) in a Turkish Muslim household.
4. A brothel or place of debauchery.
5. An interior cage or enclosed courtyard for keeping wild beasts.

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