SPIRE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does spire mean? 

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

1. a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building (usually a church or temple) and that tapers to a point at the top

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SPIRE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building (usually a church or temple) and that tapers to a point at the top

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

spire; steeple

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

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

Domain category:

church; church service (a service conducted in a house of worship)

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

pinnacle ((architecture) a slender upright spire at the top of a buttress of tower)

 Context examples 

He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

With these feelings, she rather dreaded than sought for the first view of that well-known spire which would announce her within twenty miles of home.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it and the range of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The church with the slender spire, that stands on the top of the hill now, was not there then to tell me the time.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The church spire is reckoned remarkably handsome.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I hastened towards it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It is like a broad red church spire, the top of it being level with the plateau, but a great chasm gaping between.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All they could see was a mass of towers and steeples behind the green walls, and high up above everything the spires and dome of the Palace of Oz.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

Gold and purple clouds lay on the hilltops, and rising high into the ruddy light were silvery white peaks that shone like the airy spires of some Celestial City.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)