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SPIRE
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I. (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
Synonyms:
spire; steeple
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
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:
So as we took the curve of the road the little village vanished, and there in the dip of the Downs, past the spires of Patcham and of Preston, lay the broad blue sea and the grey houses of Brighton, with the strange Eastern domes and minarets of the Prince’s Pavilion shooting out from the centre of it.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
On either side, as the path mounted, the long sweep of country broadened and expanded, sloping down on the one side through yellow forest and brown moor to the distant smoke of Lymington and the blue misty channel which lay alongside the sky-line, while to the north the woods rolled away, grove topping grove, to where in the furthest distance the white spire of Salisbury stood out hard and clear against the cloudless sky.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It was silly, I dare say, but it changed his mind, for I got rather excited, and told the story in my topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and said so kindly, 'Take it, Thomas, and oblige the young lady. I'd do as much for our Jimmy any day if I had a spire of hair worth selling.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Perhaps it was this—perhaps it was the look of the island, with its grey, melancholy woods, and wild stone spires, and the surf that we could both see and hear foaming and thundering on the steep beach—at least, although the sun shone bright and hot, and the shore birds were fishing and crying all around us, and you would have thought anyone would have been glad to get to land after being so long at sea, my heart sank, as the saying is, into my boots; and from the first look onward, I hated the very thought of Treasure Island.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance; how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects; how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky is empty!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The highway had lain through the swelling vineyard country, which stretched away to the north and east in gentle curves, with many a peeping spire and feudal tower, and cluster of village houses, all clear cut and hard in the bright wintry air.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
For, if the town intended to be destroyed should have in it any tall rocks, as it generally falls out in the larger cities, a situation probably chosen at first with a view to prevent such a catastrophe; or if it abound in high spires, or pillars of stone, a sudden fall might endanger the bottom or under surface of the island, which, although it consist, as I have said, of one entire adamant, two hundred yards thick, might happen to crack by too great a shock, or burst by approaching too near the fires from the houses below, as the backs, both of iron and stone, will often do in our chimneys.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby, looking a little, not much, younger—with a cricket bat in his hand.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
