stele
Americannoun
plural
stelai, steles-
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
- stelar adjective
Etymology
Origin of stele
First recorded in 1810–20; from Greek stḗlē, akin to histánai “to make stand,” Latin stāre “to stand”; stand
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.
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
In 1891 a French archaeological team uncovered a stone stele near the village of Sambor on the banks of the Mekong River, in what was then French Indochina, later to become Cambodia/Kampuchea.
From Scientific American • Jul. 28, 2022
Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele.
From "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
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.
