Meaning

10 senses
  1. A young shoot of a plant; a spear.

  2. Any of various tall grasses, rushes, or sedges, such as the marram, the reed canary-grass, etc.

  3. A sharp or tapering point.

  4. A tapering structure built on a roof or tower, especially as one of the central architectural features of a church or cathedral roof.

    The spire of the church rose high above the town.

    Turmspitze, Turmhelm

    шпильšpilʹ, шпицšpic

    шпильšpylʹ

  5. The top, or uppermost point, of anything; the summit.

    верху́шкаverxúška, маку́шкаmakúška

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

  6. A tube or fuse for communicating fire to the charge in blasting.

  7. One of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil.

  8. A spiral.

  9. The part of a spiral generated in one revolution of the straight line about the pole.

  10. (archaic)The stalk or stem of a plant.

Examples

8 sentences
  1. The spire of the cathedral collapsed.

    ruШпиль собора обрушился. — marafon

  2. A church spire could be seen in the distance.

    ruЦерковный шпиль виден издалека. — redscorp

    deEin Kirchturm war in der Ferne sichtbar. — Seren

  3. The library spire is the highest point on campus.

  4. What's the name of that church there with the leaning spire?

    deWie heißt die Kirche mit dem schiefen Turmhelm dort? — raggione

  5. To the west a dark church spire rose up against a marigold sky.

Translations

8 languages
Українська
By meaning 1
tapering architectural structure:
Русский
By meaning 2
tapering architectural structure:
top, or uppermost point, of anything; the summit:
Deutsch
By meaning 1
tapering architectural structure:

Origin

From Middle English spire, spyre, spier, spir, from Old English spīr, from Proto-Germanic

From Middle English spire, spyre, spier, spir, from Old English spīr, from Proto-Germanic *spīrō, *spīrǭ (“peak; point; tip; stalk”). Cognate with Dutch spier, German Low German Spier, German Spier, Spiere, Danish spir, Norwegian spir and spire, Swedish spira, Icelandic spíra.

From Middle French spire.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: spires
Singularspire
Pluralspires

regular

Synonyms

1 synonyms
Close in 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:steeple

Word family

8 related words

See also

neighbours in the dictionary

Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.

spire — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto