spire

«spire» in Mova's school dictionary: a tall, pointed, cone-shaped structure on top of a… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a spire, spires)

meaning for a pupil

1) A spire is a tall, pointed, cone-shaped structure on top of a building, usually on a church tower. tree →

2) A spire can be anything tall, thin and pointed, like a rock spire or the tip of a tree. tree →

sense in the lessons

Church life and buildings: many towns in the UK and Ireland have a church spire you can see from far away; it points upward to heaven. Maths: a spire is often shaped like a cone or a pyramid. Geography: Oxford is called «the city of dreaming spires». Salisbury Cathedral has the tallest church spire in the UK.

examples

• The church spire rose above the village. tree →
• Salisbury Cathedral has a very tall spire. tree →
• We could see the spire from the motorway. tree →
• Oxford is famous for its spires. tree →
• Lightning struck the spire during the storm. tree →
• Rocky spires stood up from the sea. tree →
• A spire is shaped like a tall cone. tree →
• All they could see was a mass of towers and steeples behind the green walls, and high up above everything the spires and dome of the Palace of Oz. tree →

note

Countable. Do not confuse with «spiral», «steeple» (the tower and spire together) or «inspire». A spire sits on top of a tower; a steeple usually means the whole tower plus spire.

In the corpora

• Lincoln Cathedral in England was probably the tallest building in the world for about 200 years, until its spire fell in 1548.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «spire» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.