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  1. gargoyle love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A roof spout in the form of grotesque or fantastic creature projecting from a gutter to carry rainwater clear of the wall.
  2. n. A grotesque ornamental figure or projection.
  3. n. A person of bizarre or grotesque appearance.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A spout projecting from the gutter of a building, or connected with it by an opening, for the purpose of carrying off the water clear from the wall. Gargoyles are sometimes plain, but in medieval buildings, especially from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, they are commonly fanciful or grotesque images of the anterior parts or entire figures of men or animals, the water usually issuing from the open mouth. Also written gurgoyle.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A carved grotesque figure on a spout which conveys water away from the gutters.
  2. n. Any decorative carved grotesque figure on a building.
  3. n. A fictional winged creature.
  4. n. slang, pejorative An ugly woman.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. (Arch.) A spout projecting from the roof gutter of a building, often carved grotesquely.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. an ornament consisting of a grotesquely carved figure of a person or animal
  2. n. a spout that terminates in a grotesquely carved figure of a person or animal

Etymologies

  1. From Old French. (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English gargoile, from Old French gargole, gargouille, throat, waterspout. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “She had learned that the word gargoyle, from the French, was related to gargouille, which meant “gullet.””

    Simon & Schuster: The Poet Prince

  • “In 1920s New York City, Professor Ernest Baxter, an expert in all things arcane; Mindy Markus, a scrappy flapper; and Roscoe, a gargoyle from the Bronx, are The Night Owls.”

    DC Comics for February 2010 | Major Spoilers - Comic Book Reviews and News

  • “I'm not entirely sure this is a gargoyle from the French: to gargle as, to be one, it has to have a water spout in its mouth.”

    Roses are Blooming in Picardie

  • “The origin of the word gargoyle and its use by the Church can be traced back to a 7th century dragon known in France as gargouille or Goji.”

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en]

  • “Also, XUP informs me that the gargoyle is a candle holder as well; I always wondered what that hole was for.”

    Careful what you wish for « XUP

  • “The gargoyle was a born storyteller, and he'd rarely had as appreciative an audience as Hosea.”

    Spirits White As Lightning

  • “Behind the gargoyle was a door, presumably leading into the kitchen.”

    Myth Conceptions

  • “With a few strokes of my mental paintbrush, I altered Gus's features until the gargoyle was the mirror image of myself.”

    Myth Conceptions

  • “One interesting object in the show connecting Egyptian magic to Judeo-Christian tradition is a lion-headed "gargoyle" that most likely adorned a temple dating to the Late (525-332 B.C.) or Ptolemaic (332-30 B.C.) periods.”

    Spellbound in Brooklyn

  • “At first I tried calling him by a different name--I was going to call him Grendel because he looks like a strange little creature and is kind of gargoyle-esque.”

    A Conversation with Jedediah Berry

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synonyms (4)

Words with the same meaning

  1. hunky punk
  1. grotesque
  1. crone
  1. hag

hypernyms (4)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. decoration
  1. ornament
  1. ornamentation
  1. spout

same context (2)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. rotter
  1. bounder

reverse dictionary (4)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. gurgoyle
  1. gargle
  1. gargyle
  1. gargoil

tags (5)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. architecture
  1. sculpture
  1. ugly
  1. ugliest
  1. cvccvvcv

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‘gargoyle’ has been looked up 2534 times, loved by 6 people, added to 68 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 13.