Stele vs Stelae - What's the difference?
stele | stelae |
* (Geoffrey Chaucer), The Canterbury Tales , "the Tale of the Wyf of Bathe"
(archaeology) An upright (or formerly upright) slab containing engraved or painted decorations or inscriptions; a stela.
* 1820 , T. S. Hughes, Trav. Sicily , I x 303:
* 1825 , T. D. Fosbroke, Encycl. Antiq. , I v 70:
* 1847 , J. Leitch translating C. O. Müller, Anc. Art , §224 193:
* 1884 , A. Lang, Custom & Myth , 285:
(archaeology, uncommon) Any carved or engraved surface.
* 1877 , A. B. Edwards, Thousand Miles up Nile , VI 143:
(architecture, archaeology, obsolete) An acroterion, the decoration on the ridge of an ancient Greek building such as a temple.
* Hosking, "Architecture" in Encyclopædia Britannica , III 470:
(botany) The central core of a plant's root and stem system, especially including the vascular tissue and developed from the plerome.
* 1895 , Sydney Howard Vines, A Students' Text-book of Botany , 179:
* 1898 , Hobart Charles Porter translating Eduard Strasburger & al. A Text-book of Botany , 109:
(archaeology)
As nouns the difference between stele and stelae
is that stele is while stelae is (archaeology).stele
English
(wikipedia stele)Etymology 1
A parallel etymology to , distinguished via ablaut.Noun
(en noun)- ...in o]] purpos stedefastly to dwelle
And nat biwreye thing that men us telle
...that tale is nat worth a rake-stele
L'ardee, we wommen conne [[nothing, no-thing hele [=hide ]
Etymology 2
From (etyl) . (stele)Alternative forms
* *Noun
(en-noun)- A superior class of members...had their names inscribed upon a marble stélé or column.
- It appears, that when any one of the family died, a stelè to his memory was added to the tomb.
- In Egypt [obelisks] belonged to the class of steles (commemorative pillars).
- The Australian stele , or grave-pillar.
- Two large hieroglyphed steles incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff.
- Stele. The ornaments on the ridge of a Greek temple, answering to the antefixæ on the summit of the flank entablatures, are thus designated.
Usage notes
* Although stela'' and ''stele'' were used in antiquity for pillars and columns generally, and continued to carry that meaning when their use was revived in English archaeology and architecture in the 18th and 19th century, respectively, present usage usually distinguishes ''obelisks'', ''columns'', ''shafts'' (the body of a column between the capital and the pediment), etc., from ''stela'' and ''stele , which are used to refer to engraved slabs or small pillars. * Furthermore, although the terms still refer to small pillarlike gravestones from antiquity, the similar-looking herms'' are now often distinguished, as are modern ''gravestones'', ''monuments'', ''boundary markers , etc. * The terms do sometimes refer to undecorated rocks when they have been raised by artificial means in prehistoric times, particularly when they are slab-like, but the large Neolithic menhirs'' are usually distinguished as are Chinese ''scholar's rocks'' or ''Taihu rocks , and other modern uses of upright stones as decoration or signage. * Stele'' is frequently pluralized irregularly as stelae, but this is a hypercorrection arising from confusion with the Latin-derived ''stela . The anglicized Greek plural (stelai) has been used since the late 19th century but is less common than (m).Synonyms
* stelaDerived terms
* actinostele * atactostele * dictyostele * eustele * haplostele * plectostele * protostele * siphonostele * solenosteleEtymology 3
From 1886 (etyl) .Noun
(en noun)- The stele may have—in different structures—one to many protoxylem (primitive wood) groups, and is accordingly described as monarch...diarch...triarch...tetrarch...polyarch.
- The so-called central cylinder, for which Van Tieghem has proposed the name stele (column).