Other forms: silos
A silo is the tall sealed tower on a farm where grain or animal feed is stored and kept dry. You see them from the motorway: a fat metal cylinder beside a barn, a ladder bolted up one side, a chute at the bottom for filling a trailer.
Some silos go down instead of up — a missile silo is a concrete tube in the ground with a rocket inside it. The office sense is the one you will read most now: departments that work in silos do not talk to each other, and siloed data sits in one team's system where nobody else can reach it. There is a verb as well, to silo something off from the rest. The fermented green fodder kept in a farm silo is called silage.
1nounsiloA tall tower or deep pit for storing grain or animal feed.
“The farm put up a second silo after the good harvest.”
2nounundergroundAn underground chamber where a missile is kept and fired from.
“The old missile silo has been sealed with concrete.”
3nounorganisationA part of an organisation that keeps its work and its information to itself.
“Sales and support run as separate silos and neither knows what the other promised.”
silo is a store for grain.
Silo came into English straight from Spanish silo, and Spanish has never settled the question of where it got the word. English took it as a term for storing grain, and it has kept spreading ever since — down into missile bases, then sideways into offices.
Spanish
silo
English, today
silo
From Spanish silo, of unclear origin. See Spanish silo for more.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Buildings & Architecture, Containers & Packaging