tectonic

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“
At the tectonic, as well as geopolitical, fault line of the Himalayas, India is the West's forward base and powerful counterbalance.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Geology Relating to, causing, or resulting from structural deformation of the earth's crust.
  2. adjective Relating to construction or building.
  3. adjective Architectural.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (3)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (35)

  • Dallas Dirt's Candy Evans has dug up an interesting nugget about another shift in the tectonic (not Teutonic) landscape in high-end residential Dallas real-estate sales. —  Dallas Blog, Daily News, Dallas Politics, Opinion, and Commentary FrontBurner Blog D Magazine
  • Briefly, Nadja carve out great slabs of sound, throbbing and trudging to melodic resolution with incredible slowness, over an entire side of vinyl at a time; you want to say "tectonic" and "chthonian" but not "glacial" because the fuzz-bass is so warm, rising through your feet, and the layered drones are so disorienting. —  Drowned In Sound // Feed
  • Damn! George W. Bush's failures may have set off a tectonic shift in US presidential politics, commencing a Democratic Party reign —  Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com
  • The surprise announcement about the classically iconic American corporation is perhaps the most vivid sign yet of the tectonic change in the relationship between business and government in this era of subsidies and bailouts. —  QandO
  • Seeing as John Wood has done those awards for what seems like forever (I think he basically founded the music awards), this is a fairly tectonic shift, akin to replacing Johnny Carson with Dave Letterman. —  Zooglobble
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Late Latin tectonicus, from Greek tektonikos, from tektōn, builder; see teks- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = German tektonik, from Latin tectonicus, from Greek τεκτονικός, of or pertaining to building, from τέκτων, a worker in wood, a earpenter; akin to τέχνη, art, handicraft: see technic. Cf. architect, architectonic.
 

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/tɛkˈtɑnɪk/
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