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Skyscraper vs Penthouse - What's the difference?

skyscraper | penthouse |

As nouns the difference between skyscraper and penthouse

is that skyscraper is a very tall building with a great number of floors while penthouse is an outhouse or other structure (especially one with a sloping roof) attached to the outside wall of a building.

skyscraper

English

(wikipedia skyscraper)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A very tall building with a great number of floors.
  • * 1910 , (William Henry Irwin), The House of Mystery ,
    • As the curve of Sandy Hook blotted from sight the last, low glimpse of the skyscrapers which point Manhattan, Blake touched Annette's arm.
  • * 1912 , (w, Elliott O'Donnell), The Sorcery Club ,
    • The solitary attic—if one could thus designate a space of about three square feet—which comprised Hamar's lodging—had the advantage of being situated in the top storey of a skyscraper'—at least a ' skyscraper for that part of the city.
  • * 1917 , Herman Gastrell Seely, A Son of the City: A Story of Boy Life ,
    • Then he noticed, as a prosaic business man will notice suddenly, that a skyscraper which he has passed daily for months is out of line with its neighbor, that the seat behind the new little girl was unoccupied and that she stood alone in the aisle during exercises.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=52, magazine=(The Economist)
    • , title= The new masters and commanders , passage=From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much.
  • (archaic) A small sail atop a mast of a ship.
  • (figuratively) Anything very tall or high.
  • * 1920 , (Zane Grey), The Redheaded Outfield and other Baseball Stories ,
    • It was no surprise to see Hanley bat a skyscraper out to left.

    penthouse

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An outhouse or other structure (especially one with a sloping roof) attached to the outside wall of a building.
  • * 1826 : William Eusebius Andrews, Review of Fox's Book of Martyrs , WE Andrews, pp. 386-7:
    • At length, recommending himself to God, he let go one end of his cord, and suffered himself to fall down upon an old shed or penthouse , which, with the weight of his body, fell in with great noise.
  • An apartment or suite found on an upper floor, or floors, of a tall building, especially one that is expensive or luxurious with panoramic views. Sometimes these are located just under "Penthouse Mechanical" floors.
  • * 1995 : Mary Ellen Waithe, Contemporary Women Philosophers: 1900-Today , Springer, p. 214:
    • Night of January 16th is the story of a woman on trial for pushing her wealthy boss-lover from a Manhattan penthouse .
  • Any of the sloping roofs at the side of a real tennis court.
  • * 2005, Tony Collins (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Traditional British Rural Sports , Routledge, page 262,
    • An odd derivative of real tennis lasted until the latter part of the eighteenth century at Rattray in Perthshire. It was played in the churchyard by two pairs of men, and the method for starting the play was to throw the ball onto the church roof, using it like the sloping penthouse of the tennis court.