stele
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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Etymology 1
From Ancient Greek στήλη (stḗlē, “upright rock; pillar; column”), plural form στῆλαι (stêlai). Doublet of stela.
Alternative forms
Pronunciation
Noun
stele (plural steles or stelai)
- (archaeology) An upright (or formerly upright) slab containing engraved or painted decorations or inscriptions; a stela.
- 1820, T. S. Hughes, Trav. Sicily, I x 303:
- A superior class of members...had their names inscribed upon a marble stélé or column.
- 1825, T. D. Fosbroke, Encycl. Antiq., I v 70:
- It appears, that when any one of the family died, a stelè to his memory was added to the tomb.
- 1847, C. O. Müller, translated by J. Leitch, Anc. Art, §224 193:
- In Egypt [obelisks] belonged to the class of steles (commemorative pillars).
- 1884, A. Lang, Custom & Myth, section 285:
- The Australian stele, or grave-pillar.
- (archaeology, uncommon) Any carved or engraved surface.
- 1877, A. B. Edwards, Thousand Miles up Nile, VI 143:
- Two large hieroglyphed steles incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff.
- (architecture, archaeology, obsolete) An acroterion, the decoration on the ridge of an ancient Greek building such as a temple.
- c. 1840, Hosking, "Architecture" in Encyclopædia Britannica, III 470:
- Stele. The ornaments on the ridge of a Greek temple, answering to the antefixæ on the summit of the flank entablatures, are thus designated.
- c. 1840, Hosking, "Architecture" in Encyclopædia Britannica, III 470:
Usage notes
- Although stela and stele were used in antiquity for pillars and columns generally, and continued to carry that meaning when their use was revived in English archaeology and architecture in the 18th and 19th century, respectively, present usage usually distinguishes obelisks, columns, shafts (the body of a column between the capital and the pediment), etc., from stela and stele, which are used to refer to engraved slabs or small pillars.
- Furthermore, although the terms still refer to small pillarlike gravestones from antiquity, the similar-looking herms are now often distinguished, as are modern gravestones, monuments, boundary markers, etc.
- The terms do sometimes refer to undecorated rocks when they have been raised by artificial means in prehistoric times, particularly when they are slab-like, but the large Neolithic menhirs are usually distinguished as are Chinese scholar's rocks or Taihu rocks, and other modern uses of upright stones as decoration or signage.
- Stele is frequently pluralized irregularly as stelae, which is also used as a plural form of the more Latinized singular form stela. The anglicized Greek plural stelai has been used since the late 19th century but is less common than steles.
Synonyms
Translations
(archaeology) tall, slender stone monument
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Etymology 2
From 1886 French stèle, from Ancient Greek στήλη (stḗlē, “upright rock; pillar; column”).
Noun
stele (plural steles)
- (botany) The central core of a plant's root and stem system, especially including the vascular tissue and developed from the plerome.
- 1895, Sydney Howard Vines, A Students' Text-book of Botany, section 179:
- The stele may have—in different structures—one to many protoxylem (primitive wood) groups, and is accordingly described as monarch...diarch...triarch...tetrarch...polyarch.
- 1898, Eduard Strasburger et al., translated by Hobart Charles Porter, A Text-book of Botany, section 109:
- The so-called central cylinder, for which Van Tieghem has proposed the name stele (column).
Derived terms
Translations
References
- Oxford English Dictionary. "Stele".
Anagrams
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