ob·e·lisk

(ŏb′ə-lĭsk)

1. A tall, four-sided shaft of stone, usually tapered and monolithic, that rises to a pointed pyramidal top.

2. The dagger sign (†), used especially as a reference mark. Also called dagger, obelus.

[Latin obeliscus, from Greek obeliskos, diminutive of obelos, a spit, obelisk.]

ob′e·lis′cal (-lĭs′kəl) adj.

ob′e·lis′koid′ (-koid′) adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

obelisk

(ˈɒbɪlɪsk)

1. (Architecture) a stone pillar having a square or rectangular cross section and sides that taper towards a pyramidal top, often used as a monument in ancient Egypt

2. (Printing, Lithography & Bookbinding) printing another name for dagger²

[C16: via Latin from Greek obeliskos a little spit, from obelos spit]

ˌobeˈliscal adj

ˌobeˈliskoid adj

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ob•e•lisk

(ˈɒb ə lɪsk)

n.

1. a tapering, four-sided shaft of stone, usu. monolithic and having a pyramidal apex.

2. obelus.

3. dagger (def. 2).

[1540–50; < Latin obeliscus < Greek obelískos small spit]

obelisk

1. A monument of Ancient Egyptian origins, consisting of a tall tapering shaft of stone with a pyramidal top.

2. A tall, four-sided, stone pillar, especially one erected as a monument in ancient Egypt.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	obelisk - a stone pillar having a rectangular cross section tapering towards a pyramidal top pillar, column - a vertical cylindrical structure standing alone and not supporting anything (such as a monument)
	2.	obelisk - a character used in printing to indicate a cross reference or footnote dagger grapheme, graphic symbol, character - a written symbol that is used to represent speech; "the Greek alphabet has 24 characters"

obelisk

noun column, shaft, monument, pillar, monolith, needle The obelisk was erected in his memory in 1812.

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

obelisk

obeliski

obelisk

[ˈɒbɪlɪsk] N → obelisco m

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

obelisk

[ˈɒbəlɪsk] n → obélisque m

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

obelisk

(Archit) → Obelisk m

(Typ) → Kreuz nt

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

obelisk

[ˈɒbɪlɪsk] n → obelisco

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

An obelisk marks the spot where two men have already been drowned, while bathing there; and the steps of the obelisk are generally used as a diving-board by young men now who wish to see if the place really IS dangerous.

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Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.

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Five years later, in the twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green, beside the meeting-house, at Lexington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate inlaid, commemorates the first fallen of the Revolutions.

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"Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he announced overwhelmingly.

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As they approached the Piazza del Popolo, the crowd became more dense, and above the heads of the multitude two objects were visible: the obelisk, surmounted by a cross, which marks the centre of the square, and in front of the obelisk, at the point where the three streets, del Babuino, del Corso, and di Ripetta, meet, the two uprights of the scaffold, between which glittered the curved knife of the mandaia.

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There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who, addressing me as

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Here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.

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We turned to the right, circling at a stately pace about the rather mean obelisk which stands at the entrance to the Prado.

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He read of the swallows that fly in and out of the little cafe at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles with small beryl eyes that crawl over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre.

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The place to which Mr Cheeryble had directed him was a row of mean and not over-cleanly houses, situated within 'the Rules' of the King's Bench Prison, and not many hundred paces distant from the obelisk in St George's Fields.

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They divided it into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds.

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Their residences are usually on the outskirts of 'the Rules,' chiefly lying within a circle of one mile from the obelisk in St.

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