Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Obelisk |
ObeliskNoun1. A stone pillar having a rectangular cross section tapering towards a pyramidal top. 2. A character used in printing to indicate a cross reference or footnote. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "obelisk" was first used: 1569. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Dream Interpretation | An obelisk looming up stately and cold in your dreams is the forerunner of melancholy tidings. For lovers to stand at the base of an obelisk, denotes fatal disagreements. Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted .... |
Literature | Obelisk (See Dagger. ). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Cleopatra's Needle on the banks of the River Thames in London, England.An obelisk is a thin, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramidal top. Ancient obelisks were made of a single piece of stone (a monolith).
Obelisks were erected by the ancient Egyptiansians, placing them in pairs at the entrance of temples, but apparently only 27 large-scale standing obelisks have survived (see link below). The Romans were infatuated with obelisks, to the extent that there are now more than twice as many obelisks standing in Rome as remain in Egypt.
Not all the Egyptian obelisks re-erected in the Roman Empire were set up at Rome. Herod the Great imitated his Roman patrons and set up a red granite Egyptian obelisk in the hippodrome (racetrack) of his grand new city Caesarea in northern Palestine. It was discovered by archaeologists and has been re-erected at its former site.
In Byzantium, the Eastern Emperor Theodosius shipped an obelisk in 390 CE and had it set up in his hippodrome, on a specially-built base, where it has weathered Crusaders and Seljuks and stands in the Hippodrome square in modern Istanbul.
Rome is the obelisk capital of the world. The most prominent must be the obelisk at St. Peter's Square in Rome, the re-erection of which, by Fontana, was a famous feat of 17th century engineering, that Fontana detailed in a book illustrated with engravings. Another obelisk stands in front of the church of Trinità dei Monti, at the head of the Spanish Steps. There is a further famous obelisk in Rome, sculpted as carried on the back of an elephant. Rome lost one of its obelisks, which had decorated the temple of Isis, where it was uncovered in the 16th century. The Medici claimed it for the Villa Medici, but in 1790 they managed to move it to the Boboli Gardens attached to the Pitti Palace in Florence, and left a replica in its stead.
Several more of the original Egyptian obelisks have been shipped and re-erected all over the world. The best-known examples outside Rome are the pair of so-called Cleopatra's Needles in London and New York and the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
The Ethiopian Obelisk of Axum was looted and taken to Rome in 1935; in 2003 the Italian government agreed to return it.More obelisks are listed at Monolith.
The Washington Monument is a modern obelisk.
The name of the comic book figure Obelix (from the Asterix strips) is derived from the word obelisk.
External Links
Obelisk is an uncommon name for dagger.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Obelisk."
Synonym: ObeliskSynonym: dagger (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Height | Tower, pillar, column, obelisk, monument, steeple, spire, minaret, campanile, turret, dome, cupola;skyscraper. |
Interment | Monument, cenotaph, shrine; grave stone, head stone, tomb stone; memento mori; hatchment, stone; obelisk, pyramid. |
Record | Monument, hatchment, slab, tablet, trophy, achievement; obelisk, pillar, column, monolith; memorial; memento; (memory); testimonial, medal; commemoration; (celebration). |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Obelisk |
| English words defined with "obelisk": monolith ♦ Obeliscal, Obelisked, Obelisking ♦ Pyramidion ♦ Washington Monument. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "obelisk": Monumental City ♦ Pompey's Pillar, Printers Marks. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Obelisk" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Albanian (obelisk), Czech (obelisk), German (obelisk), Manx (obelisk), Serbo-Croatian (obelisk), Swedish (obelisk, obelus), Turkish (obelisk). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Stricken from every pylon and obelisk of Egypt (The Ten Commandments; writing credit: J.H. Ingraham; A.E. Southon) | |
Movie/TV Titles | In Search of the Obelisk (1993) Tatort - Der schwarze Obelisk (1988) The Obelisk (1977) Obelisk (1976) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Hamilton flag-draped obelisk monument with relief sculpture. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Architectural drawing for a monument with obelisk on top of doric portico. Front elevation. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | A view of the obelisk erected under Liberty-tree in Boston on the rejoicings for the repeal of the ---- Stamp Act 1766. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | The Obelisk in a horizontal position. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Murad (Amurath) IV, Sultan of the Turks, 1612-1640, full-length portrait, standing, facing right, against building with obelisk at right. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Central Park, N.Y., the obelisk. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | The Obelisk in Central Park, New York, N.Y. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |  |
| "Malibu Obelisk" by Kelly Abbott Commentary: "Ten stories." | "Horton Plaza" by Erika Thorpe Commentary: "Entrance to Horton Plaza shopping complex in downtown San Diego, the colorful obelisk was built by the artist Joan Brown." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. | |
| "Obelisk" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 97.92% of the time. "Obelisk" is used about 48 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 97.92% | 47 | 49,740 |
| Noun (proper) | 2.08% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 48 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "obelisk": double obelisk. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "obelisk"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | obelisk, shenjë (accent, aim, auspice, Beck, brand, butt, cue, denotation, denotement, earmark, ensign, evidence, exponent, fleck, foretoken, impress, index, indication, insignia, Mark, marking, obelus, office, omen, pledge, pointer, portent, presage, prognostication, scratch, seal, sign, signal, stamp, symbol, symptom, tally, target, token, vestige, Wale, weal), lapidar (monolith). (various references) | |
Arabic | مسلة نصب عمودي, نصب عمودي, الخنجرية. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | кръстче, обелиск (needle). (various references) | |
Chinese | 方尖碑. (various references) | |
Czech | obelisk. (various references) | |
Farsi | ستون هرمی شکل سنگی . (various references) | |
French | obélisque. (various references) | |
German | obelisk. (various references) | |
Greek | οβελίσκοσ (spire), οβελίσκος. (various references) | |
Hebrew | מצבת מחט, אובליסק. (various references) | |
Hungarian | obeliszk (needle). (various references) | |
Indonesian | tugu (monument). (various references) | |
Italian | obelisco. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | オプション取引 (medical operation, oblisque, Omaha, omega, omelette, omelette rice, omit, omnibus, Omron Corporation, opaque, opcode, OPEC, opera, opera glasses, opera house, opera-comique, operand, operating, operating system, operating-system, operation, operation center, operation code, operational, operational amplifier, operations, operations research, operator, operetta, opossum, opportunism, opportunist, opposition party, optical, optical art, optimism, optimist, optimistic, optimize, optimizer, option dealing, option trading, option transaction, optoelectronics, OR, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OS). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | オベリスク . (various references) | |
Manx | obelisk, obeel. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | obeliskay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | obelisco. (various references) | |
Romanian | obelisc. (various references) | |
Russian | обелиск (needle). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | obelisk, tipografki krstić. (various references) | |
Spanish | obelisco (dagger). (various references) | |
Swedish | obelisk (obelus). (various references) | |
Turkish | obelisk, köşeli sütun, dikilitaş, dikili taş (stela, stele, stone monument), başvurma işareti (diesis, obelus). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | обеліск (needle), знак виноски (asterisk). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | tháp núi hình tháp, đài kỷ niệm (cenotaph, memorial, monument). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | obeliscus. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "obelisk": obelisks. (additional references) | |
| |
"Obelisk" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: abelisk, Abeliuk, Belinsky, boylesk, kozelsk, obeisk, obelias, obelish, obilisk, oblisk, odelisk, Ofellius, ohelisk. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "b-e-i-k-l-o-s" | |
-1 letter: blokes. | |
-2 letters: bikes, biles, bilks, bloke, boils, boles, kibes, kilos, koels, likes, lobes, obeli, solei. | |
-3 letters: bels, bike, bile, bilk, bios, bise, bisk, boil, bole, bosk, elks, ilks, isle, kibe, kilo, kobs, koel, kois, leis, leks, libs, lies, like, lobe, lobs, lose, obes, obis, oils, okes, oles, sike, silk, silo, slob, sloe, soil. | |
| Words containing the letters "b-e-i-k-l-o-s" | |
+1 letter: kilobase, obelisks. | |
+2 letters: blockiest, kilobases, kilobytes, skimobile. | |
+3 letters: knobbliest, kohlrabies, skimobiles. | |
+4 letters: blackbodies, bookmobiles, bookselling, bootlickers, lobsterlike, nonsinkable. | |
+5 letters: bluestocking, boilermakers, booksellings, cinderblocks, doublethinks, rockabillies. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Images: Digital Art | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Translations: Ancient 14. Derivations 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
