Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A building, especially one of imposing appearance or size.
- n. An elaborate conceptual structure: observations that provided the foundation for the edifice of evolutionary theory.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A building; a structure; an architectural fabric: applied chiefly to large or fine buildings, public or private.
Wiktionary
- n. A building; a structure; an architectural fabric, especially an imposing one; a large or fine building, public or private.
- n. An abstract structure; a school of thought.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A building; a structure; an architectural fabric; -- chiefly applied to elegant houses, and other large buildings.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place
Etymologies
- Middle English edifice, from Old French edifice, reborrowed from Latin aedificium ("building"), derived from aedificāre ("to build, establish") (whence also edify). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin aedificium, from aedificāre, to build : aedis, a building + -ficāre, -fy. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The owner of the edifice is a 56 years old landscape architect by the way, and he say an upwards of $12,000 has gone into building thetreehouse.”
“To him this edifice is a beautiful structure, although it will never be finished.”
“Having the bad luck to ascend to Power just as the whole Washington edifice is swirling down the shithole. ha ha ha”
“The entire U.S. geopolitical imperial edifice is a house built on sand.”
“Successful policies & programs might take decades of hard work to carefully craft & hordes of active & involved supporters to defend them against the forces of reaction & hate while the edifice is being built & occupied.”
“That whole rather rickety edifice is being swept away and replaced with a much simpler system," Sampson said.”
The Guardian: Got a legal complaint? Now you can take it to the new legal ombudsman
“The Eiffel-like edifice is modelled on the 1799 Faversham church spire which adopted very similar buttresses in order to soften the blow should it fall into the town as a result of an explosion at the nearby gunpowder works.”
“Even his grand Social Security edifice is under assault by the vandals of the G.O.P. Conservatives insist the cuts are necessary to get the roaring federal budget deficit under control.”
“Now on the one hand, as we have seen, every brick making up this massive conceptual edifice is a friable mixture of untruth, half-truth, hypothesis or assertion.”
Professing Literature: John Guillory's Misreading of Paul de Man
“The old blueprints were found much later and the reconstructed edifice is a replica of how it was before the bad times.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘edifice’.
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Mirrored Vowels
Rules:
• The word must have an even number of vowels.
• There must be four or more vowels; thus, at minimum, an A-A-A-A or A-B-B-A pattern.
• The vowels must appear in a mir...feminine, solicitor, caruncular, repackager, semiprimes, fetishises, decomposer, demonlover, recomposer, sepultures, lipotropic, colesterol and 385 more...
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gre
municipal, whit, dissembler, berate, liberally, embellish, dissimilitude, histrionics, flamboyance, bombastic, bovine, calumny and 142 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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FUN - Jeeves and Wooster - Jeeves
"Jeevesisms" as heard from the valet Jeeves in P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves and Wooster" stories.
abject, attire, boudoir, be agog to learn, breach of peace, companionship of ..., contract an engag..., correct orifice, determined temper..., edifice, endeavor to ascer..., expatiate and 46 more...
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EN - high brow
abrogate, abstemious, abstract of law, alderman, apocryphal, apostasy, apoplexy, apotheosis, apposite, aver, decorous, apprehensive and 51 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1904 more...
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jan_21
magoosh listens
infuriating, imperciptible, sporadic, galvanize, shirk, protean, versatile, auspicious, clairvoyance, nary, presentiment, qualm and 63 more...
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Barron's 1100 words you need to know ...
abstemious, derogatory, disparate, edifice, extant, indict, levity, lugubrious, maudlin, nebulous, omnivorous, pesky and 8 more...
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Good for Academics
Gahh!! Study!
supplant, usurp, finagle, winnow, draconian, abut, collude, swindle, objectify, incite, decadent, obstinate and 327 more...
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Need to Know!
elicit, educe, refute, cogency, churlish, martinet, veritable, polyglot, dissemble, histrionics, prevarication, verbiage and 166 more...
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Words I have to learn
exasperate, felony, weld, fraud, worksheet, ransom, rehearse, preliminary, offshore, parole, infamous, sieve and 436 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for edifice.
koldewyse I was reminded of this word through my Spanish studies: "edificio" is much more commonly used than its English counterpart, as we English-speakers are more prone to using "building." Dec 16, 2007