spire

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See also: 'spire

English

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Wikipedia

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

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.

Noun

spire (plural spires)

  1. (now rare) The stalk or stem of a plant.
  2. A young shoot of a plant; a spear.
  3. Any of various tall grasses, rushes, or sedges, such as the marram, the reed canary-grass, etc.
  4. A sharp or tapering point.
    • 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict‎:
      A beech wood with silver firs in it rolled down the face of the hill, and the maze of leafless twigs and dusky spires cut sharp against the soft blueness of the evening sky.
  5. (architecture) 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.
  6. The top, or uppermost point, of anything; the summit.
  7. (mining) A tube or fuse for communicating fire to the charge in blasting.
Derived terms
Translations

Verb

spire (third-person singular simple present spires, present participle spiring, simple past and past participle spired)

  1. (of a seed, plant etc.) to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
      In gentle Ladies breste and bounteous race / Of woman kind it fayrest Flowre doth spyre, / And beareth fruit of honour and all chast desyre.
    • 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. , 2nd edition, London: J H for H Mortlock , and J Robinson , published 1708, →OCLC:
      It is not so apt to spire up as the other sorts, being more inclined to branch into arms.
  2. To grow upwards rather than develop horizontally.
  3. (transitive) To furnish with a spire.

Etymology 2

From Old French spirer, and its source, Latin spīrō (“to breathe”).

Verb

spire (third-person singular simple present spires, present participle spiring, simple past and past participle spired)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To breathe.

Etymology 3

From Middle French spire.

Noun

spire (plural spires)

  1. One of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil.
  2. A spiral.
  3. (geometry) The part of a spiral generated in one revolution of the straight line about the pole.

Anagrams

French

Etymology

From Latin spira, from Ancient Greek σπεῖρα (speîra).

Pronunciation

Noun

spire f (plural spires)

  1. turn (of a spiral)
  2. turn (of an electromagnetic coil)

Further reading

Anagrams

Italian

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈspi.re/
  • Rhymes: -ire
  • Hyphenation: spì‧re

Noun

spire f

  1. plural of spira

Anagrams

Middle English

Noun

spire

  1. Alternative form of spere (“sphere”)

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From Old Norse spíra (stem, pipe; little tree).

Noun

spire f or m (definite singular spira or spiren, indefinite plural spirer, definite plural spirene)

  1. sprout

Verb

spire (present tense spirer, past tense spirte, past participle spirt)

  1. to sprout

References

Venetian

Noun

spire

  1. plural of spira
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