/ˈtaʊ.ə(ɹ)/, [ˈtɑːə], [ˈtɑː]
OriginFrom Middle English tour, tur, tor, from Old English tūr, tor, torr ("tower; rock"; > English tor) and Old French tour, toer, tor; both from Latin turris (“a tower”), Ancient Greek τύρρις (túrrhis) (Hesychius), τύρσις (túrsis).
Compare Scots tour, towr, towre (“tower”), West Frisian toer (“tower”), Dutch toren (“tower”), German Turm (“tower”), Danish tårn (“tower”), Swedish torn (“tower”), Icelandic turn (“tower”), Welsh tŵr.
Doublet of tor, tourelle, and turret.
- A very tall iron-framed structure, usually painted red and white, on which microwave, radio, satellite, or other communication antennas are installed; mast.
- A similarly framed structure with a platform or enclosed area on top, used as a lookout for spotting fires, plane crashes, fugitives, etc.
- A water tower.
- A control tower.
- Any very tall building or structure; skyscraper.
- figurativelyAn item of various kinds, such as a computer case, that is higher than it is wide.
- abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, informalEllipsis of interlocking tower.
- figurativelyA strong refuge; a defence.
“Thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.”
- historicalA tall fashionable headdress worn in the time of King William III and Queen Anne.
“Lay trains of amorous intrigues / In towers, and curls, and periwigs.”
- obsoleteHigh flight; elevation.
“Nigh in her sight
The Bird of Jove, stoopt from his aerie tour,
Two Birds of gayest plume before him drove.”
- The sixteenth trump or Major Arcana card in many Tarot decks, usually deemed an ill omen.
- The nineteenth Lenormand card, representing structure, bureaucracy, stability and loneliness.
- collectiveA group of giraffes.
“A group of giraffes is called a tower.”
- Each of a set of information technology concerns within a business, which are treated separately so that they can be handled by different providers.
“Suppliers compete separately for the towers and service integrator and management contract, which assists the government in the integration and operation of its services.”
“Service towers are significant IT functional areas, such as infrastructure, applications, security, etc., each possibly managed by a different service provider. The service integrator role is crucial ”
- A metal stand used as a pivot to support a punty at a furnace.
- One who tows.
“But as the tower and towee reached the cross-roads again, another car, negligently driven, came round the corner, hit the Morris, and severed the tow rope, sending the unfortunate car back again into ”
- attributiveDenoting the system of weights used by the Saxon and Norman English kings in their minting of coins.
- intransitiveTo be very tall.
“The office block towered into the sky.”
“Potentilla and Ivory Daphne sat humpily about on the unfolded lawns, and ahead, there towered out enormous cliffs and fantastic pinnacles of what looked like Dolomite.”
“This is itself a cheerless spot, particularly on a rainy day, when, overshadowed by the great massif of rock that towers in the background, and surrounded by the grey and cheerless quarries, it has a ”
- intransitiveTo be high or lofty; to soar.
“My lord protector's hawks do tower so well.”
“When Hope, the eagle that tower’d, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly —
And homeward turn’d his soften’d eye.”
“As we breasted the first summit, the precipitous mass of the Raven's Rock, towering some 250 ft. above the railway, looked grim and forbidding in the failing light, and distant Ben Wyves was shrouded ”
- obsolete, transitiveTo soar into.
“Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit
The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower
The mid aerial sky”
- UK, countable, uncountableThe Tower of London, especially seen as a place of imprisonment or punishment.
“Traitors should be sent to the Tower!”
- countableA habitational surname.; Alternative form of Towers.
- countable, uncountableA city in Saint Louis County, Minnesota, United States.
Formstowers(plural) · towre(alternative) · towers(present, singular, third-person) · towering(participle, present) · towered(participle, past) · towered(past) · Towers(plural)