Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The upper part of the nave, transepts, and choir of a church, containing windows.
- n. An upper portion of a wall containing windows for supplying natural light to a building.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. See clearstory.
Wiktionary
- n. architecture the upper part of a wall containing windows to let in natural light to a building, especially in the nave, transept and choir of a church or cathedral
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Same as clearstory.
WordNet 3.0
- n. part of an interior wall rising above the adjacent roof with windows admitting light
Etymologies
- Middle English clerestorie : perhaps cler, giving light, clear; see clear + storie, tier; see story2. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I thought the term clerestory window was pronounced like cler-est-or-eee.”
“The eastern part of the clerestory is a modern reproduction of that which superseded Rahere's; but, with this exception, the interior of the choir was probably much the same originally as it is”
“This applies only to the windows in the aisle; those in the triforium are of three lights, similar to those removed from the aisle; and those in the clerestory are the original Norman, just as on the north side.”
“There are two small windows in the west wall to light the wall passage to the clerestory, which is reached by a gallery running across the base of the north window.”
“Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles, the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof.”
“Barbara Karant Glade House Lake Forest, Ill. Frederick Phillips and Associates This 3,200-square-foot house outside Chicago mixes traditional features -- cedar shingle siding, regularly-spaced vertical windows and gabled roofs -- with modern touches such as clerestory windows and an open-plan interior.”
“The 'clerestory' of the sixteenth century is full of painted glass.”
“The window openings enclosed the magnificent views of the cliffs and the clerestory windows brought softened light.”
“One is of the Miracle of the loaves and fishes from the top register of the nave wall (above the clerestory windows) of Sant 'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, ca. 504.”
“On the opposite side of the courtyard, the master suite has a clerestory of unobstructed glass that brings daylight into the rooms from the central sky lit courtyard.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘clerestory’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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phrontistery - c
from phrontistery.info
caballine, cabas, cable, caboched, cabochon, caboose, cabotage, cabré, cabrie, cabriole, cabriolet, cacaesthesia and 1298 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Architectual terms
Any words to do with architecture or building materials, to help me write a fictional city for a novel.
welkin, cornice, gargoyle, quatrefoil, frieze, bargeboard, corbel, cupola, belvedere, steeple, widow's walk, minaret and 13 more...
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Vocab [General]
No particular specification to this list.
philology, etymology, atavistic, proscribe, inchoate, vulgate, abstruse, agnate, anodize, anthropomorphic, assiduous, augur and 89 more...
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dark and bright words of shine and fi...
scotophil, scotoma, scotia, shed, shadow, shade, scone, whiting, edelweiss, light, lightning, lucina and 349 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
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Word of the day.
Some days, there will be a word. That word is the word of the day. Other days shall remain wordless. That's just the way things go.
petulant, anisometropia, zoroaster, cram, affinity, proprietary, cupertino effect, sidereal, schmutz, icosanoids, vendetta, bougie and 137 more...
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Castles and Keeps
Shamelessly ripped off from this site and others (to be named hereinafter). (Fair warning: for my own edification, I may add definitions/comments from the site, but you might want to just go there ...
abutment, adulterine, allure, angle-spur, apse, arbalest, arbalestier, arbalist, arcade, arch, armoury, arrow slit and 410 more...
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Resource
katabatic, clerestory, haslet, alpenglow, purl, scumble, jessant, spavined, wayworn, creach, dottle, solferino and 165 more...
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...another list...
I've no idea where I got this page full of words, but whatever it is, I want to find it again. May have duplicate words from other lists.
bicameral, aphelion, dirigible, parhelion, flocculus, vernier, corticate, oxalis, pandanus, calabash, plumbago, jonquil and 217 more...
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Favorite Words of AWP13
We asked attendees who visited the Wordnik booth what their favorite words were, and these are what they told us. (AWP is an annual conference for writers and those in the writing world.)
cling, declivity, susurrus, caramel, cataract, please, fester, reverie, kerplunk!, defenestration, colonel, ocean and 174 more...
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the omnibus
preponderance, idioglossia, acumen, heteronym, flux, anacoluthon, metonymy, impetus, constellation, exegesis, revelatory, cloistered and 877 more...
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words
diplopic, dolorous, farrago, surety, scuttlebutt, Arabesque, infarct, neurasthenia, lambent, expurge, univocal, simper and 395 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for clerestory.

fbharjo muddied-with-fail! Mar 12, 2013
frindley The Macquarie Dictionary online gives the etymology as:
cler- clear + French estoré built
Perhaps there's some Latin in the "cler" part if one goes back far enough (clarus?).
Apr 2, 2008
seanahan The etymology is clearly English, although from the spelling I can imagine that is why you'd think it was Latinate. Knowing the etymology, it couldn't be cle-RES-tor-y, but I give you full credit. Just assume that your ex got lucky.
I never did the spelling bee, but this seems like it would be a great word. Apr 2, 2008
yarb Gosh, is it really pronounced like that? Your ex may have been in the right technically, but cle-RES-tor-y is still the clear moral winner. Mar 31, 2008
frindley One of those words that tends to be discovered in reading rather than in conversation. So for many years I thought it was pronounced cle-RES-tor-y (four syllables, stress on the second). Had a frustrating (’cause I lost) argument with my first boyfriend who, of course, pronounced it clear-story as it should be. But when it came to awry I won and all was well again. Mar 31, 2008