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PROMONTORY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A natural elevation (especially a rocky one that juts out into the sea)
Synonyms:
foreland; head; headland; promontory
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)
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:
In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I had seen a distant headland past the extreme edge of the promontory, and as we looked we could see grow the intervening coastline of what was evidently a deep cove.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
We were not far off the line the wind made with the western edge of the promontory, and I watched in the hope that some set of the current or send of the sea would drift us past before we reached the surf.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Just before dinner, starting for the beach with an empty barrel, they altered their course and bore away to the left to round the promontory which jutted into the sea between them and liberty.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Again I turned my face to leeward, and again I saw the jutting promontory, black and high and naked, the raging surf that broke about its base and beat its front high up with spouting fountains, the black and forbidden coast-line running toward the south-east and fringed with a tremendous scarf of white.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
