Spire vs Pike - What's the difference?
spire | pike |
A young shoot of a plant; a spear.
* 1913 ,
A sharp or tapering point.
* {{quote-book, year=1907, author=
, title=The Dust of Conflict
, chapter=1 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.
* Shakespeare
(mining) A tube or fuse for communicating fire to the charge in blasting.
Of a seed, plant etc.: to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate.
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , III.5:
* Mortimer
To grow upwards rather than develop horizontally.
(obsolete) To breathe.
One of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil.
A spiral.
(geometry) The part of a spiral generated in one revolution of the straight line about the pole.
A very long thrusting spear used two-handed by infantry both for attacks on enemy foot soldiers and as a counter-measure against cavalry assaults. The pike is not intended to be thrown.
* 1790 , , Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile
A sharp point, such as that of the weapon.
Any carnivorous freshwater fish of the genus Esox'', especially the northern pike, ''Esox lucius .
A turnpike.
A pointy extrusion at the toe of a shoe, found in old-fashioned footwear.
* 1861 , The comprehensive history of England Vol. 1
* 1904 , George Nicholls, A History of the English Poor Law in Connection with the State of the Country and the Condition of the People
(diving) A dive position with knees straight and a tight bend at the hips.
* 2000 , (JG Ballard), Super-Cannes , Fourth Estate 2011, p. 167:
* 2008 , , China wins first diving medal at Beijing Olympics Aug 10 2008 [http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id=245859&lid=sublink05&lpos=headlines_olympics]
(obsolete, UK, dialect) A hayfork.
(obsolete) A pick.
A large haycock.
To attack, prod, or injure someone with a pike.
To quit or back out of a promise.
* 2002 , Sylvia Lawson, How Simone De Beauvoir Died in Australia ,
* 2006 , Pip Wilson, Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push ,
* 2008 , Chris Pash, The Last Whale , Fremantle Press, Australia,
A mountain peak or summit.
*, II.ii.3:
*:The pike of Teneriffe how high it is? 70 miles? or 50, as Patricius holds? or 9, as Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes ?
As nouns the difference between spire and pike
is that spire is or spire can be one of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil while pike is drop.As a verb spire
is of a seed, plant etc: to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate or spire can be (obsolete) to breathe.spire
English
Etymology 1
(etyl) . Cognate with Dutch spier, German Spier, (Spiere), Danish spir, Norwegian spir, Swedish spira.Noun
(en noun)- Clara had pulled a button from a hollyhock spire , and was breaking it to get the seeds.
citation, passage=A beech wood with silver firs in it rolled down the face of the hill, and the maze of leafless twigs and dusky spires cut sharp against the soft blueness of the evening sky.}}
- The spire of the church rose high above the town.
- the spire and top of praises
Verb
(spir)- In gentle Ladies breste and bounteous race / Of woman kind it fayrest Flowre doth spyre , / And beareth fruit of honour and all chast desyre.
- It is not so apt to spire up as the other sorts, being more inclined to branch into arms.
Etymology 2
From (etyl) spirer, and its source, (etyl) .Verb
(spir)- (Shenstone)
Etymology 3
From (etyl) spire.Noun
(en noun)- (Dryden)
Anagrams
* ----pike
English
(wikipedia pike)Etymology 1
(etyl) ultimately a variant form of pick, with meaning narrowed. Cognate with Dutch piek, dialectal German Peik, Norwegian pik. pique.Noun
(en noun)- Each had a small ax in the foreangle of his saddle, and a pike about fourteen feet long, the weapon with which he charged;
- (Beaumont and Fletcher)
- (Charles Dickens)
- During the earlier part of this period, the long pike disappeared from the shoe, but in the later part it returned in greater longitude than ever.
- Thus the statute of , which forbade the fine gentlemen of those times, under the degree of a lord, to wear pikes upon their shoes or boots of more than two inches in length, was a law that savoured of oppression, because, however ridiculous the fashion might appear, the restraining of it by pecuniary penalties would serve no purpose of common utility.
- She sprang into the air and jack-knifed into a clumsy pike before following her hands into the water.
- Guo and Wu took a big lead after the second dive, a back dive in pike position, which the judges awarded three perfect tens for synchronization.
- (Tusser)
- (Raymond)
- (Wright)
- (Halliwell)
Synonyms
* ''see: northern pikeDerived terms
* come down the pike * garpike * pikehead * pikestaff * pikemanVerb
(pik)- Don't pike on me like you did last time!
page 151,
- —But Camus piked out, said Carole. Sartre and that lot got pissed off with him, he stood off from the war, he wouldn?t oppose it.
page 543,
- Holman accepted the challenge while Norton ‘piked out’; nevertheless Holman won Cootamundra against a strong candidate.
page 36,
- If they didn?t go ahead, it would look like they had piked , backed down.