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whispering gallery

American

noun

a space or gallery beneath a dome or broad arch in which low sounds produced at any of certain points are clearly audible at certain other distant points.

whispering gallery British

noun

a gallery or dome with acoustic characteristics such that a sound made at one point is audible at distant points

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of whispering gallery

First recorded in 1690–1700

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.

In the same way that the architecture of a whispering gallery bends and focuses sound waves, WGM microresonators confine and concentrate light in a tiny circular path.

From Science Daily • Apr. 26, 2024

Capitol is a whispering gallery with an elliptical cross section.

From Textbooks • Mar. 30, 2016

A person is standing 8 feet from the nearest wall in a whispering gallery.

From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015

The new sensor differs from earlier whispering gallery resonators in that it is itself a miniature laser rather than the resonating cavity of an external laser.

From US News • Jun. 29, 2011

For centuries, such a system of police was established by the Holy Inquisitors, that these countries resembled a vast whispering gallery, where the slightest murmur of discontent could be heard and punished.

From Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by Foxe, John

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023