stele
Americannoun
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an upright stone slab or pillar bearing an inscription or design and serving as a monument, marker, or the like.
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Architecture. a prepared surface on the face of a building, a rock, etc., bearing an inscription or the like.
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(in ancient Rome) a burial stone.
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Botany. the central cylinder or cylinders of vascular and related tissue in the stem, root, petiole, leaf, etc., of the higher plants.
noun
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an upright stone slab or column decorated with figures or inscriptions, common in prehistoric times
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a prepared vertical surface that has a commemorative inscription or design, esp one on the face of a building
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the conducting tissue of the stems and roots of plants, which is in the form of a cylinder, principally containing xylem, phloem, and pericycle See also protostele siphonostele
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of stele
First recorded in 1810–20; from Greek stḗlē, akin to histánai “to make stand,” Latin stāre “to stand”; see stand
Explanation
An ancient, upright stone monument is called a stele. Many stelae were carved with inscriptions and used as grave markers. These tall slabs played an important role in the traditions of ancient Greece, Egypt, Somalia, and more. In addition to its potential use as a gravestone, a stele might be used as a territory or boundary marker, or even a way to publicize new laws or a ruler's military successes. The word derives from the Greek stēlē, "standing block." In botany, a stele is the upright core of a vascular plant.
Vocabulary lists containing stele
The Lightning Thief
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Mesopotamia - Introductory
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Mesopotamia - Middle School and High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The room’s most impressive object is a 5th century BC carved marble stele, 8 feet tall.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2025
The stele was illegally excavated near the ancient city of Zeugma, in what is near Gaziantep, in present-day southeastern Turkey, the police said.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 28, 2023
The hieroglyphics in this Egyptian stele from circa 1944 BCE are far more stylized than the Egyptian writing produced a thousand years earlier.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
The repatriation marked the first time the United States had returned cultural property to Yemen since 2004, when one funerary stele was transferred to the Yemeni Embassy.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 21, 2023
He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age.
From "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
The finest specimens, from the purely artistic point of view, are undoubtedly the two stelai found at Athens.
From Shorter Prose Pieces by Wilde, Oscar
Dr. Strzygowski gives similarly shaped stelai from Alexandria and Cairo, with incised awkward scrolls, and some of Arab date.
From The Shores of the Adriatic The Austrian Side, The Küstenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia by Jackson, F. Hamilton (Frederick Hamilton)
The finest specimens, from the purely artistic point of view, are undoubtedly the two stelai found at Athens.
From Miscellanies by Ross, Robert
Throughout the 14-year process, he meticulously copied inscriptions from steles, statues and papyrus.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 1, 2022
It consists of a field of massive gray steles designed to communicate sorrow, accompanied by an underground information center.
From Time ● Sep. 19, 2014
Ms. Vitale’s repurposed rails feel in this context like grave steles or memorials.
From New York Times ● Aug. 7, 2014
He also goes around to famous mountains, where they erect steles, stone monuments, which say that the Emperor's realm is now totally unified.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2012
Arab archæology is represented by memoirs of M. Casonova on an Arab globe, on sixteen Arab steles, and especially by M. Burgoin's great work on Arab art in Egypt.
From The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
