spire1
/spʌɪə
/noun
1A tapering conical or pyramidal structure on the top of a building, typically a church tower.He enjoyed a reputation for building tall elegant masonry structures such as church towers and spires....
- It runs along something of a ridge so we could see for miles to villages betrayed by church towers and spires.
- The architecture attested to its ancient heritage, with massive castle-like structures adorned with spires and turrets on nearly every building.
Synonyms
steeple, belfry;
flèche;
Hinduism shikara
1.1The continuation of a tree trunk above the point where branching begins, especially in a tree of a tapering form.How lovely and strange the gangly spires of trees against a thickening sky as you drive from the library humming off-key?...
- After clipping another bolt, I looked out to see nothing but blue sky with a few light, wispy clouds hovering way above the spires of Queen Creek Canyon.
- The spires of the background forest continue this use of repetition.
1.2A long tapering object: spires of delphiniums...
- I prefer the restrained vista-framing, avenue-forming, gentle shapes of cylinders, spires and cones.
- Is it simply the love of adventure that beckons them towards these pristine ice clad peaks and spires, at times crossing the barren icy wastelands to reach the zenith of tranquility and peace the mountains offer?
- The rest of the crater forms a rim of jagged peaks and spires, which give it a dinosaur skeleton-like profile.
Derivatives
spired
- A stupa was originally a burial mound enshrining relics of a holy person, but over the centuries this has developed into tall, spired monuments.
- We all scrambled past the opened, tall, spired gate.
- The heroic duo took off in the direction of eight spired rocks to the west.
spiry
- The spectacle presented by these century-old trees standing close beside a spiry wall of ice, with their branches almost touching it, was most novel and striking.
- Once upon the spiry pinnacles which crown the rim, a scene of wild power broke upon us.
Origin
Old English spīr 'tall slender stem of a plant'; related to German Spier 'tip of a blade of grass'.
Old English spīr was a ‘tall slender stem of a plant’, related to German Spier ‘tip of a blade of grass’. The word came to be used in the late 16th century for a slender structure such as a spire of rock or a church spire. Dreaming spires comes from Matthew Arnold, writing of Oxford in Thyrsis (1865) ‘And that sweet city with her dreaming spires…Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night’. Spire has no connection with spiral (mid 16th century) which comes from Latin spira ‘coil’.
Rhymes
spire2
/spʌɪə/noun Zoology
The upper tapering part of the spiral shell of a gastropod mollusc, comprising all but the whorl containing the body.However, the upper spire whorls of P. calafia are shorter than the corresponding ones on P. acuminata....
- When viewed from above, the shells appear to represent small piles of pebbles, with the smallest ones on the upper spire and the largest ones on the body whorl.
- Inspection of the literature reveals that a number of fossil species of cerithiform gastropods have a high-pyramidal spire like that of Alamirifica.
Origin
Mid 16th century (in the general sense 'a spiral'): from French, or via Latin from Greek speira 'a coil'.