Monastery vs. Nunnery — What's the Difference?

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.

Synonym of brothel.

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

A convent of nuns.

The dwelling place of such a community.

The residence of a female religious community, a monastery for nuns.

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

A house in which nuns reside; a cloister or convent in which women reside for life, under religious vows. See Cloister, and 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.

The convent of a community of nuns

The residence of a religious community