architecture

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The art and science of designing and erecting buildings.
2. n. Buildings and other large structures: the low, brick-and-adobe architecture of the Southwest.
3. n. A style and method of design and construction: Byzantine architecture.
4. n. Orderly arrangement of parts; structure: the architecture of the federal bureaucracy; the architecture of a novel.
5. n. Computer Science The overall design or structure of a computer system, including the hardware and the software required to run it, especially the internal structure of the microprocessor.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The art of building, specifically of fine or beautiful building. Architecture includes, in the widest sense. the principles of design and of ornament as applied to building;
2. n. The buildings or other objects produced by architecture as defined above.
3. n. The character or style of building: as, the architecture of Paris.
4. n. Construction and formative design of any kind.
5. To construct; build.
6. n. The design of the strictly architectural buildings in such pleasure-grounds (pavilions, casinos, terrace walls, parapets, perrons, and pedestals for statues).
7. n. that of the time of Herod Agrippa (37–44 a. d.), under whom the system of design was Roman, with, only such modification as was common in the cities of Syria.
8. n. Architecture in which the work is cast in a solid mass (as in pisé, or rammed clay), in recent times by means of artificial stone.

Wiktionary

1. n. The art and science of designing buildings and other structures.
2. n. The profession of an architect.
3. n. Any particular style of building design.
4. n. A unifying structure.
5. n. A specific model of a microchip or CPU.
6. n. The structure and design of a system or product.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The art or science of building; especially, the art of building houses, churches, bridges, and other structures, for the purposes of civil life; -- often called civil architecture.
2. n. Construction, in a more general sense; frame or structure; workmanship.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (computer science) the structure and organization of a computer's hardware or system software
2. n. the discipline dealing with the principles of design and construction and ornamentation of fine buildings
3. n. the profession of designing buildings and environments with consideration for their esthetic effect
4. n. an architectural product or work