tower
Pluraltowers
Pluraltowers
Formstowers, towering, towered
- 1A very tall building or structure, such as a skyscraper.
Engineers spent five years constructing the tallest tower in the region.
The glass tower reflected the sunset across the harbor.
Similarskyscraper, high-rise
Note
Here the word often becomes part of a name: the Sears Tower, and many buildings like it, carry Tower as a capitalized part of their title. As a common noun it sits close to skyscraper, but it reaches further. Tower can take in any very tall structure, while skyscraper is kept for buildings.
- 2A very tall iron-framed structure, usually painted red and white, on which microwave, radio, or satellite antennas are installed; a mast.
The radio tower blinked red against the night sky.
Crews painted the communication tower in red and white bands for aircraft visibility.
Similarmast
Note
The newest kind of tower carries one of the oldest words: Latin turris, which reached English both through Old English and through Old French tour. Old English torr also meant "rock," a meaning that survives in the word tor. In this antenna sense it overlaps with mast, and it usually travels with a qualifier that names its job: radio tower, communication tower.
- 3To rise high above one's surroundings; to be very tall.
The cathedral spires tower over the medieval town.
Skyscrapers towered above the narrow streets below.
Note
The verb was formed from the noun as far back as Old English, and it describes height measured against something else. It usually takes over, above or into: cliffs tower over the sea, an office block towers into the sky. Its participle towering has become an everyday adjective, as in The Economist's "towering skyscrapers."
- 4Something, such as an upright computer case, whose height exceeds its width.
She upgraded the graphics card inside her desktop tower.
The server towers hummed quietly in the climate-controlled room.
- 5The elevated structure at an airport from which controllers direct the movement of aircraft.
The pilot radioed the tower for landing clearance.
Air traffic controllers in the tower tracked every approaching flight.
- 6An elevated tank on a tall frame that stores water and keeps pressure steady in the pipes below.
Engineers drained the tower to inspect its tank for corrosion.
During the drought, the town's tower ran dangerously low.
- 7A framed structure topped with a platform or enclosed cabin, used as a lookout for spotting fires, crashes, or fugitives.
The ranger climbed the tower to scan the forest for smoke.
A guard in the tower spotted the escaped prisoners near the fence.
Similarlookout
- 8To rise to a lofty height; to soar.
Great cliffs tower over the crashing sea below.
Her reputation towered above that of her rivals.
Note
Here the height is gained by rising, and the first things to tower were birds. Shakespeare writes, "My lord protector's hawks do tower so well," and Poe describes Hope as "the eagle that tower'd." Unlike the plain "be tall" verb, it keeps a sense of upward motion. Later writers apply it to cliffs and to the Jungfrau, where soaring and simply standing tall begin to blur.
- 9In many tarot decks, the sixteenth trump card of the Major Arcana, generally taken as a bad omen.
The Tower fell across his spread, hinting at an unavoidable crisis.
Reversed, the Tower can soften into a warning rather than a disaster.
- 10A strong place of refuge; a means of defense or protection.
Throughout the siege, the general remained a tower for his weary soldiers.
Her grandmother had always been a tower against every misfortune.
Similarrock, pillar, bulwark, bastion, stronghold
Note
A figure with a scriptural ring. The Holy Bible of 1611 addresses God as "a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy," and the pairing strong tower still echoes that line. The sense works best when a person or a faith is the subject, cast as the thing others shelter behind.
- 11USTOH-ur/ˈtoʊ.ɚ/UKTOH-uh/ˈtəʊ.ə(ɹ)/A person or vehicle that tows something, hauling a load or disabled vehicle behind it.
The harbor's busiest tower hauled three stranded yachts to shore before noon.
Licensed towers must secure each load before pulling it onto the road.
Note
A separate word that happens to share the spelling. It is tow plus -er, pronounced in two syllables like mower, not like flower. It pairs naturally with towee: The Autocar in 1933 describes "the tower and towee" reaching the cross-roads. Where a tall structure could be meant, a phrase such as towing vehicle avoids the stumble.
- 12A group of giraffes considered collectively.
Just as lions form a pride, giraffes form a tower.
The guide pointed out a tower of giraffes browsing among the acacias.
Two separate towers drifted toward the same stretch of riverbank.
Similarherd
Note
One of the playful collective nouns, in the same company as a gaggle, a confusion and a conspiracy. The image is easy to see: long necks rising together. It almost always appears in the phrase a tower of giraffes. Use it where the charm is welcome; in plain reporting, a group of giraffes says the same thing.
- 13Each of a set of information technology concerns within a business, kept separate so that different providers can handle them.
The outsourcing deal split the firm's operations into five towers, each handled by its own vendor.
Negotiators assigned the networking tower to a specialist supplier.
Note
Outsourcing jargon from IT service management. A business divides its technology into service towers, such as infrastructure, applications and security, and each can go to a different provider. A service integrator then coordinates the whole. The term turns up in procurement: British government suppliers competed separately for the towers and for the integration contract. Expect it in the plural and in the compound service tower.
- 14Ellipsis of interlocking tower.
The operator in the tower set the route for the incoming freight.
An old brick tower still governed the switches where the two lines crossed.
Note
A railroad shortening, and an informal one. Interlocking tower is the US term for the building or room that houses the controls for track switches, and it is clipped to tower once the setting is clear. Keep it distinct from the airport's control tower: both are places where traffic is directed, but this one handles switches for trains. For readers outside railroading, give the full term first.
- 15Card number nineteen in the Lenormand deck, standing for structure, bureaucracy, stability, and loneliness.
The tower fell beside the heart card, hinting at distance in a relationship.
When the tower appears near the house, some readers see a sign of solid institutions.
Note
Lenormand reads this card more soberly than Tarot does. Where the Tarot card is usually an ill omen, the nineteenth Lenormand card stands for structure, bureaucracy and stability, with loneliness as its shadow. Readers interpret it against the cards beside it. Next to the heart it can suggest distance in love; near the house it can point to solid institutions.
- 16A tall, fashionable headdress worn by women during the reigns of King William III and Queen Anne.
Court portraits from the period show ladies in elaborate towers of starched lace.
Lay trains of amorous intrigues / In towers, and curls, and periwigs.
1662, [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”Note
A word for the history of dress, not for today. Use it when describing the fashions of the reigns of William III and Anne. Samuel Butler's Hudibras sets it among the vanities of its day: "In towers, and curls, and periwigs." That company is a good guide. The word belongs beside periwig and curl, not beside modern words for hats.
- 17A metal stand used as a pivot to support a punty at the glassblowing furnace.
The gaffer balanced the punty on the tower while shaping the rim.
A sturdy tower at the furnace let the artisan spin the glass evenly.
Note
A glassblower's workshop term. At the furnace, the punty is the iron rod attached to the glass piece. The tower gives that rod a metal stand to rest and pivot on, so the work can be turned and steadied. Outside the studio, most readers would picture a building, so make the glassblowing setting clear when you use it.
- 18To soar high upward into the open air or sky.
The trained falcon would tower the morning sky, then stoop on its prey.
Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower The mid aerial sky
1667, John Milton, Paradise LostNote
The same soaring, made transitive, with the sky as the object. In Milton's Paradise Lost, the birds, "rising on stiff pennons, tower / The mid aerial sky." The construction is obsolete; modern English adds a preposition and has things tower into the sky. Like the old noun for high flight, it is something to recognize in older poetry, not to use in new writing.
- 19The state of high flight; the great elevation reached in soaring.
Nigh in her sight The Bird of Jove, stoopt from his aerie tour, Two Birds of gayest plume before him drove.
1667, John Milton, Paradise LostNote
A bird's height, spelled the old way. In Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), the Bird of Jove stoops "from his aerie tour," keeping the Middle English spelling tour. The noun is obsolete, but the idea lives on in the soaring verb, where hawks still tower. In older poetry, read it as the peak a bird climbs to before it dives.
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Origins
From Middle English tour (and tor, torr), from Old English tūr/torr ("tower; rock") and Old French tour, both from Latin turris ("a tower"), itself from Ancient Greek túrrhis/túrsis. It is a doublet of tor, tourelle, and turret.
From Middle English touren, from Old English *torrian, which was formed from the noun (the tower sense above).
Formed from the verb tow plus the suffix -er.