dolmen
pronunciation
How to pronounce dolmen in British English:
UK [ˈdɒlmen]
How to pronounce dolmen in American English:
US [ˈdoʊlmen]
-
- Noun:
- a prehistoric megalith typically having two upright stones and a capstone
Word Origin
- dolmen
- dolmen: [19] English acquired the word dolmen for a ‘prehistoric structure of two upright stones surmounted by a horizontal one’ from French, but its ultimate source is Celtic. The element men means ‘stone’ (it occurs also in menhir [19], literally ‘long stone’) but there is disagreement about the first syllable. It is usually said to represent tōl ‘table’, a Breton borrowing from Latin tabula ‘board, plank’, but another view is that it is Cornish tol ‘hole’, and that the compound as a whole means literally ‘stone hole’, a reference to the aperture formed by the top stone lying on the two side stones.=> menhir
- dolmen (n.)
- 1859, from French dolmin applied 1796 by French general and antiquarian Théophile Malo Corret de La Tour d'Auvergne (1743-1800), perhaps from Cornish tolmen "enormous stone slab set up on supporting points," such that a man may walk under it, literally "hole of stone," from Celtic men "stone." Some suggest the first element may be Breton taol "table," a loan-word from Latin tabula "board, plank," but the Breton form of this compound would be taolvean. "There is reason to think that this [tolmen] is the word inexactly reproduced by Latour d'Auvergne as dolmin, and misapplied by him and succeeding French archaeologists to the cromlech" [OED]. See cromlech, which is properly an upright flat stone, often arranged as one of a circle.
Example
- 1. She is also standing next to a megalithic structure - a dolmen .
- 2. The final dolmen of the dark moors is mysteriously missing , believed removed .
- 3. " Liquidity remains in the system . It 's not finding its way into consumer spending but it is finding its way into asset prices , such as commodiies , " says stephen taylor , a strategist at dolmen stockbrokers in dublin .