Other forms: lighthouses
A lighthouse is the tall tower whose turning beam warns ships away from rocks. The lighthouse on the point, a lighthouse keeper, the lighthouse still works.
Each one has a distinctive flash pattern — its character — so that sailors can tell them apart, and those patterns are printed on charts. Almost all are now automated; the last British lighthouse keepers left in 1998. Many stand on rocks reachable only by boat or helicopter. Figuratively a lighthouse is anything that gives guidance from a distance, and the metaphor is used freely in speeches and hymns.
1nounlighthouseA tower whose beam warns ships away from danger.
“The lighthouse can be seen for about twenty miles.”
lighthouse is a warning tower.
The word is simply light plus house, first recorded in the seventeenth century. English preferred the plain compound where French and Italian took Greek — their words come from Pharos, the great lighthouse of Alexandria.
From light + house.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA