steeple
pronunciation
How to pronounce steeple in British English:
UK [ˈsti:pl]
How to pronounce steeple in American English:
US [ˈstipəl]
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- Noun:
- a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building (usually a church or temple) and that tapers to a point at the top
Word Origin
- steeple (n.)
- Old English stepel (Mercian), stiepel (West Saxon) "high tower," related to steap "high, lofty," from Proto-Germanic *staupilaz (see steep (adj.)). Also the name of a lofty style of women's head-dress from the 14th century. Steeple-house (1640s) was the old Quaker way of referring to "a church edifice," to avoid in that sense using church, which had with them a more restricted meaning.
Example
- 1. Again and again he dwells on the fact that the thing in the steeple knows where to find him .
- 2. In one corner of the cobwebbed chamber a ladder was built into the wall , leading up to the closed trap door of the windowless steeple above .
- 3. A church bell usually resides in a steeple and the exercise involved has to do with repeatedly pulling on a rope .
- 4. The night of our birth , a thunderstorm had cracked a tree in the courtyard of the new church , setting the building afire until it was no more than a charred sliver of steeple and smoking pews .