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edifice

UK/ˈɛd.ɪ.fɪs/US/ˈɛd.ɪ.fɪs/
nounC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,151 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: edifices

An edifice is a large imposing building, or a great system of ideas. A grand edifice.

The figurative use is commoner in writing, where a whole theory can be an edifice. An edifice built on one assumption falls when that assumption goes.

Moh hakem · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of edifice

  1. 1nounedificeA large imposing building, or a great system of ideas.C2

    “The whole edifice of the argument rested on one figure.”

edifice is a building.

Remember it

The Latin is to build. An edifice is the thing built, and a big one: the whole building, not one room of it.

hooks ontobuild

Where it comes from

Latin aedificium comes from aedificare, to build, from aedes, a building, plus facere, to make.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *dʰeh₁-

  2. Latin

    aedificium — building

  3. Old French

    edifice

  4. Middle English

    edifice

  5. English, today

    edifice

Built from

  • aedificāre · Latin — to build, establish

From Middle English edifice, from Old French edifice, a classical borrowing of Latin aedificium (“building”), derived from aedificāre (“to build, establish”) (whence also English edify).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

edifice in the wild

  • A building or edifice is an enclosed structure with a roof, walls and often windows, usually standing permanently in one place, such as a house or factory.

    Building

  • Of the original 11th-12th centuries edifice, today the base of the bell tower and the Romanesque-style apse remain.

    Favria

  • The former terminology, Ulysses Patera, now applies only (and more accurately) to the central caldera, whereas formerly it had applied to the whole edifice.

    Ulysses Tholus

  • Tholus describes a volcanic edifice somewhat smaller than would be implied by mons.

    Ulysses Tholus

  • The edifice is a minor example of Byzantine architecture in Constantinople.

    Kasım Agha Mosque

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the aedificāre family

edificeedify

edifice — used about once every 8,182 pages · #11,151 · point at the bar for the others