STEEPLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does steeple mean? 

• STEEPLE (noun)
  The noun STEEPLE 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: STEEPLE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STEEPLE (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 ("steeple" 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 "steeple"):

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

 Context examples 

At length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

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)

And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

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)

In every other direction the low curves of the moor, bronze-coloured from the fading ferns, stretched away to the sky-line, broken only by the steeples of Tavistock, and by a cluster of houses away to the westward which marked the Mapleton stables.

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

All this life through which the electric car whirred seemed remote and unreal, and he would have experienced little interest and less shock if the great stone steeple of the church he passed had suddenly crumbled to mortar-dust upon his head.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But, when I spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the streets, to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in any person’s hand.

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

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)