Steeple
['stiːp(ə)l] or ['stipl]
Definition
(noun.) a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building (usually a church or temple) and that tapers to a point at the top.
Typist: Stacey--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) A spire; also, the tower and spire taken together; the whole of a structure if the roof is of spire form. See Spire.
Edited by Denny
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. Spire, tower, turret.
Checked by Irving
Definition
n. a tower of a church or building ending in a point: the high head-dress of the 14th century.—adj. Steep′led furnished with a steeple: adorned with or as with steeples or towers.—ns. Steep′le-hat a high and narrow-crowned hat; Steep′le-house an old Quaker name for the building in which believers meet for worship; Steep′lejack one who climbs steeples and chimney-stalks to make repairs.
Editor: Maggie
Unserious Contents or Definition
To see a steeple rising from a church, is a harbinger of sickness and reverses. A broken one, points to death in your circle, or friends. To climb a steeple, foretells that you will have serious difficulties, but will surmount them. To fall from one, denotes losses in trade and ill health.
Editor: Thea
Examples
- I eagerly traced the windings of the land, and hailed a steeple which I at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. Mary Shelley. Frankenstein_Or_The Modern Prometheus.
- His supposition was tested on a chur ch steeple at Paris, and, later, on the Puy de D?me, a mountain in Au vergne. Walter Libby. An Introduction to the History of Science.
- By means of a lens one can easily get on a visiting card a picture of a distant church steeple. Bertha M. Clark. General Science.
- I had known many of the grown people before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- He told Master Hans about this, and the optician fixed two lenses in a tube, and looking at the weathercock on a neighboring steeple saw that it seemed much nearer and to be upside down. Rupert S. Holland. Historic Inventions.
- He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
- The building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and the principal steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high. Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad.
- At length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul's towering above all, and the Tower famed in English history. Mary Shelley. Frankenstein_Or_The Modern Prometheus.
- And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist of sunset. Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad.
- There were the piles of city roofs and chimneys, more free from smoke than on week-days; and there were the distant masts and steeples. Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit.
Checker: Rupert