Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A pole decorated with streamers that those celebrating May Day hold while dancing.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A pole around which the people dance in May-day festivities. It was usually cut and set up afresh on May-day morning, drawn by a long procession of oxen, decorated, as were also the pole itself and the wagon, with flowers and ribbons; but in some cases a pole once set up was left from year to year, as notably the famous pole of the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft in London, which was cut down in the reign of Edward VI. At the restoration of Charles II. a May-pole 134 feet high was set up in the Strand. A few May-poles still remain in England, although the celebration is almost obsolete.
- n. An ale-stake.
- n. A tree of Jamaica, Spathelia simplex, of the order Simarubeæ. It has a tall slender stem with a crown of leaves at the top, like a palm. Also called
mountain-pride and mountain-green.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. See Maypole in the Vocabulary.
- n. A tall pole erected in an open place and wreathed with flowers, about which the rustic May-day sports were had.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a vertical pole or post decorated with streamers that can be held by dancers celebrating May Day
Examples
“The dance of the Maypole is the weaving of the energies of life, male and female.”
“The Maypole might be a representative of something like the World Tree from Norse myth, with which it would be consistent, or it might represent something different.”
“The truth is that the respectable hotel called the Maypole and Garland was being”
“The strange story of the incongruous strangers is still remembered along that strip of the Sussex coast, where the large and quiet hotel called the Maypole and Garland looks across its own gardens to the sea.”
“The dance was called the Maypole dance, and it had proper steps of its own, just like any other dance.”
“BRIGHT were the days at Merry Mount, when the Maypole was the banner staff of that gay colony!”
“Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the banner-staff of that gay colony.”
“In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London -- measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, 'or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore -- a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew.”
“IN the year 1775 there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London -- measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore -- a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew.”
“Hanoverian rats, "she exclaimed indignantly," and those German women who pocketted everything they could lay their hands upon -- the 'Maypole' and the 'Elephant,' the one because she's so lean and the other because she's so fat -- they're rats too.”
Lists
‘Maypole’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for Maypole.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.