PROMONTORY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does promontory mean? 

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

1. a natural elevation (especially a rocky one that juts out into the sea)

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• PROMONTORY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A natural elevation (especially a rocky one that juts out into the sea)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

foreland; head; headland; promontory

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

elevation; natural elevation (a raised or elevated geological formation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "promontory"):

mull (a term used in Scottish names of promontories)

point (a promontory extending out into a large body of water)

Instance hyponyms:

Cape Horn (a rocky headland belonging to Chile at the southernmost tip of South America (south of Tierra del Fuego))

Calpe; Gibraltar; Rock of Gibraltar (location of a colony of the United Kingdom on a limestone promontory at the southern tip of Spain; strategically important because it can control the entrance of ships into the Mediterranean; one of the Pillars of Hercules)

Cape Hatteras (a promontory on Hatteras Island off the Atlantic coast of North Carolina)

Cape Canaveral; Cape Kennedy (a sandy promontory (formerly Cape Kennedy) extending into the Atlantic Ocean from a barrier island off the eastern coast of Florida; the site of a NASA center for spaceflight)

Cape Sable (a promontory on the far southern part of Nova Scotia)

Abila; Abyla; Jebel Musa (a promontory in northern Morocco opposite the Rock of Gibraltar; one of the Pillars of Hercules)

 Context examples 

At half-past three in the afternoon we passed the south-western promontory.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I could see the cool green tree-tops swaying together in the breeze, and I felt sure I should make the next promontory without fail.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I carefully traced the windings of the land and hailed a steeple which I at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with utility—and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of the solitary rocks and promontories by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space,—that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Even the grim south-western promontory showed less grim, and here and there, where the sea-spray wet its surface, high lights flashed and dazzled in the sun.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

As I turned the promontory I perceived a small neat town and a good harbour, which I entered, my heart bounding with joy at my unexpected escape.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

There were no beaches on the southern shore, and by early afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed the circumnavigation of the island.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The most violent storm hung exactly north of the town, over the part of the lake which lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village of Copêt.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But it was not till the third day that we found them, all of them, the shears included, and, of all perilous places, in the pounding surf of the grim south-western promontory.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)