stele
Pronunciation Noun

stele (plural steles)

  1. Obsolete form of stale#English-handle,_shaft,_stem|stale (“handle, shaft, stem”).
Pronunciation
  • (modern) IPA: /ˈstiːli/; (formerly also) IPA: /stiːl/
Noun

stele (plural steles)

  1. (archaeology) An upright (or formerly upright) slab containing engraved or painted decorations or inscriptions; a stela.
    • 1820, T. S. Hughes, Trav. Sicily, I x 303:
      A superior class of members...had their names inscribed upon a marble stélé or column.
    • 1825, T. D. Fosbroke, Encycl. Antiq., I v 70:
      It appears, that when any one of the family died, a stelè to his memory was added to the tomb.
    • 1847, J. Leitch translating C. O. Müller, Anc. Art, §224 193:
      In Egypt [obelisks] belonged to the class of steles (commemorative pillars).
    • 1884, A. Lang, Custom & Myth, 285:
      The Australian stele, or grave-pillar.
  2. (archaeology, uncommon) Any carved or engraved surface.
    • 1877, A. B. Edwards, Thousand Miles up Nile, VI 143:
      Two large hieroglyphed steles incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff.
  3. (architecture, archaeology, obsolete) An acroterion, the decoration on the ridge of an ancient Greek building such as a temple.
    • circa 1840 Hosking, "Architecture" in Encyclopædia Britannica, III 470:
      Stele. The ornaments on the ridge of a Greek temple, answering to the antefixæ on the summit of the flank entablatures, are thus designated.
Synonyms Translations Noun

stele (plural steles)

  1. (botany) The central core of a plant's root and stem system, especially including the vascular tissue and developed from the plerome.
    • 1895, Sydney Howard Vines, A Students' Text-book of Botany, 179:
      The stele may have—in different structures—one to many protoxylem (primitive wood) groups, and is accordingly described as monarch...diarch...triarch...tetrarch...polyarch.
    • 1898, Hobart Charles Porter translating Eduard Strasburger & al. A Text-book of Botany, 109:
      The so-called central cylinder, for which Van Tieghem has proposed the name stele (column).
Translations
  • Russian: стель



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