Cloister vs. Monastery — What's the Difference?

A cloister (from Latin claustrum, "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against a warm southern flank, usually indicates that it is (or once was) part of a monastic foundation, "forming a continuous and solid architectural barrier...

A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds.

A quadrangle enclosed by an open colonnade and a covered walk.

A community of persons, especially monks, bound by vows to a religious life and often living in partial or complete seclusion.

The covered walk enclosing such a quadrangle.

The dwelling place of such a community.

A place, especially a monastery or convent, devoted to religious seclusion.

A residence for monks or others who have taken religious vows.

Life in a monastery or convent.

A house of religious retirement, or of secusion from ordinary temporal concerns, especially for monks; - more rarely applied to such a house for females.

A secluded, quiet place.

The residence of a religious community

To shut away from the world in or as if in a cloister; seclude.

To furnish (a building) with a cloister.

A covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle; especially:

Such an arcade in a monastery;

Such an arcade fitted with representations of the stages of Christ's Passion.

A place, especially a monastery or convent, devoted to religious seclusion.

(figuratively) The monastic life.

(intransitive) To become a Roman Catholic religious.

(transitive) To confine in a cloister, voluntarily or not.

(intransitive) To deliberately withdraw from worldly things.

(transitive) To provide with a cloister or cloisters.

(transitive) To protect or isolate.

An inclosed place.

A covered passage or ambulatory on one side of a court;

A monastic establishment; a place for retirement from the world for religious duties.

To confine in, or as in, a cloister; to seclude from the world; to immure.

Residence that is a place of religious seclusion (such as a monastery)

A courtyard with covered walks (as in religious institutions)

Surround with a cloister, as of a garden

Seclude from the world in or as if in a cloister;