pedestal
[ped-uh-stl]
- an architectural support for a column, statue, vase, or the like.
- a supporting structure or piece; base.
- Furniture.
- a support for a desk, consisting of a boxlike frame containing drawers one above the other.
- a columnar support for a tabletop.
- Building Trades. a bulge cast at the bottom of a concrete pile.
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- to put on or supply with a pedestal.
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- set/put on a pedestal, to glorify; idealize: When we first became engaged each of us set the other on a pedestal.
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Origin of pedestal
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for pedestal
Contemporary Examples
But whereas we used to be satisfied gazing on that perfection as it stood up on a pedestal, now we want it down among us.
Bow Down, Bitches: How Beyoncé Turned an Elevator Brawl Into a Perfect YearKevin Fallon
December 31, 2014
Almost a decade later Olmstead has stepped down from her pedestal to focus more of her time on sports and friends.
Her very first sculpture, a metallic chrome unicorn aptly titled “Space Oracle,” sits on a pedestal directly in front.
The151-foot newborn waited in the harbor on her 171-foot pedestal, a huge French flag fluttering over her dark copper face.
A delicious marble Cupid appeared to have just alighted on his pedestal at the upper end of the room.
Read ‘The King in Yellow,’ the ‘True Detective’ Reference That’s the Key to the ShowRobert W. Chambers
February 20, 2014
Historical Examples
Some one wrote to me in trouble, ‘When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.’
De ProfundisOscar Wilde
Of course when they saw me I was not on my pedestal, I was in the pillory.
De ProfundisOscar Wilde
On a pedestal beneath the window was placed a marble bust of Dante.
Night and Morning, CompleteEdward Bulwer-Lytton
The sky was all now—the earth only a background or pedestal for the heavens.
Wilfrid CumbermedeGeorge MacDonald
No ascetic monk, no curled cavalier, looks down from the pedestal.
pedestal
- a base that supports a column, statue, etc, as used in classical architecture
- a position of eminence or supposed superiority (esp in the phrases place, put, or set on a pedestal)
- either of a pair of sets of drawers used as supports for a writing surface
- (as modifier)a pedestal desk
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Word Origin
C16: from French piédestal, from Old Italian piedestallo, from pie foot + di of + stallo a stall
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for pedestal
n.
1560s, "base supporting a column, statue, etc.," from Middle French piédestal (1540s), from Italian piedistallo "base of a pillar," from pie "foot" + di "of" + stallo "stall, place, seat," from a Germanic source (see stall (n.1)).
Spelling in English influenced by Latin pedem "foot." An Old English word for it was fotstan, literally "foot-stone." Figurative sense of put (someone) on a pedestal "regard as highly admirable" is attested from 1859.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Idioms and Phrases with pedestal
pedestal
see on a pedestal.
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The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.