LIGHTHOUSE

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does lighthouse mean? 

• LIGHTHOUSE (noun)
  The noun LIGHTHOUSE has 1 sense:

1. a tower with a light that gives warning of shoals to passing ships

  Familiarity information: LIGHTHOUSE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LIGHTHOUSE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A tower with a light that gives warning of shoals to passing ships

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

beacon; beacon light; lighthouse; pharos

Hypernyms ("lighthouse" is a kind of...):

tower (a structure taller than its diameter; can stand alone or be attached to a larger building)

Instance hyponyms:

Tower of Pharos (a great lighthouse (500 feet high) built at Alexandria in 285 BC)

 Context examples 

To the north, and not far away, a group of naked rocks thrust above the sea, on one of which I could distinguish a lighthouse.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

These distortions actually shift the position of Earth and the pulsars ever so slightly, resulting in a characteristic and detectable signal from the array of celestial lighthouses.

(Listening for Gravitational Waves Using Pulsars, NASA)

We see some neutron stars as pulsars, rapidly spinning objects emitting beams of light that, much like a lighthouse, regularly sweep across our line of sight.

(NASA’s Fermi Mission Links Nearby Pulsar’s Gamma-ray ‘Halo’ to Antimatter Puzzle, NASA)

Outside the harbour on this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp edge of which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It seemed a lighthouse; but it was inside his brain—a flashing, bright white light.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a lighthouse.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If aligned well enough with Earth, these beams act like a lighthouse beacon — appearing to flash on and off as the pulsar rotates.

(NuSTAR Helps Find Universe's Brightest Pulsars, NASA)

I observed, however, that Mr. Spenlow's proctorial gown and stiff cravat took Peggotty down a little, and inspired her with a greater reverence for the man who was gradually becoming more and more etherealized in my eyes every day, and about whom a reflected radiance seemed to me to beam when he sat erect in Court among his papers, like a little lighthouse in a sea of stationery.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Pulsars are dense remnants of dead stars that regularly emit beams of radio waves, which is why some call them "cosmic lighthouses."

(Listening for Gravitational Waves Using Pulsars, NASA)

On the near side, the sea-wall makes an elbow crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)