ostiary

Borrowed from Latin ostiārius, from ostium (“door, entrance”). See usher, which may be a doublet.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɒsti.əɹi/, /ˈɒst͡ʃəɹi/

ostiary (plural ostiaries)

1. (archaic) The mouth of a river; an estuary.
   • 1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC:

     the river of Nilus hath seven ostiaries, that is, by seven channels disburdened itself into the sea

2. One who keeps the door, especially the door of a church; a porter.

   Synonym: ostiarius

   • 1647, Nath[aniel] Bacon, “Of Other Inferiour Church-officers amongst the Saxons”, in An Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England. The First Part. From the First Times till the Reign of Edward the Third, London: […] Mathew Walbancke […], →OCLC, page 28:

     They had other inferiour degrees of the Clergy, vvhich becauſe they are meerly ſubſervient, and not conſiderable in Church-government, I ſhall onely touch upon them. […] Laſtly, Oſtiaries; vvhich uſed to ring the bells, and open and ſhut the Church-doores.

   • 1987, Gene Wolfe, chapter XXV, in The Urth of the New Sun, 1st US edition, New York: Tor Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 149:

     So arrayed I stepped at last from my door and was saluted as before by my monstrous ostiaries.

• ostiariate

• “ostiary”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.