spire

Meanings

Noun

• The stalk or stem of a plant.
• A young shoot of a plant; a spear.
• Any of various tall grasses, rushes, or sedges, such as the marram, the reed canary-grass, etc.
• A sharp or tapering point.
• A tapering structure built on a roof or tower, especially as one of the central architectural features of a church or cathedral roof.
• The top, or uppermost point, of anything; the summit.
• A tube or fuse for communicating fire to the charge in blasting.
• One of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil.
• A spiral.
• The part of a spiral generated in one revolution of the straight line about the pole.

Verb

• to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate.
• To grow upwards rather than develop horizontally.
• To furnish with a spire.
• To breathe.

Origin

• From Middle English spire, spyre, spier, spir, from Old English spīr, from Proto-Germanic *spīrō, *spīrǭ. Cognate with Dutch spier, German Low German Spier, German Spier, Spiere, Danish spir, Norwegian spir and spire, Swedish spira, Icelandic spíra.
• From Old French spirer, and its source, Latin spīrō ("to breathe").
• From Middle French spire.