monolith
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: agriculture
business
chemistry
construction
horticulture
lifestyle
manufacturing
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
Etymology: The noun is borrowed from French monolithe (“object made from a single block of stone”), from Middle French monolythe (“made from a single block of stone”) (rare), and from their etymon Latin monolithus (“made from a single block of stone”), from Ancient Greek μονόλιθος (monólithos, “made from a single block of stone”), from μονο- (mono-, prefix meaning ‘alone; single’) (from μόνος (mónos, “alone; only, unique”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“little, small”)) + λίθος (líthos, “a stone; stone as a substance”); analysable as mono- + -lith. The English word is cognate with German monolith (“made from a single block of stone”).
The verb is derived from the noun.
Base: mono
Inflected forms:
form: monoliths
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: monoliths
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: monolithing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: monolithed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: monolithed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A large, single block of stone which is a natural feature; or a block of stone or other similar material used in architecture and sculpture, especially one carved into a monument in ancient times.
pos: noun
tags: also
attributive
examples: Tomb of Napoleon I. [...] Twelve colossal statues, by [James] Pradier, representing as many victories, stand against the pilasters, facing the tomb, consisting of an immense monolith of porphyry, weighing 135,000 lbs., and brought from Lake Onega in Finland at a cost of 140,000fr.
Rumour, with her thousand tongues, affirms that the "Prince Albert Memorial" will not take the form of a monolith; we shall not be sorry to learn the fact of some more suitable monument having been decided upon.
[...] I do not think that the idea of a serpent with a ball at its mouth is so very palpable a religious symbol, and one so innate, that it should be the very first thing which would occur as an emblem of the great deity of the waters, to aboriginal Egyptians, to monolith-setters in Brittany, to mound-builders in Ohio, to Peruvians and Mexicans.
The practice of using large blocks of stone, either as monoliths or as forming parts of structures, has existed from the earliest times in all parts of the world.
Similar engines are erected in Yorkshire on concrete foundations, with a top layer of monolith or Bramley Fall stone, costing from £800 to £1000.
On 2 April 1901 Doyle wrote to his mother from Rowe's Duchy Hotel at Princetown: [...] We did fourteen miles over the moor to-day and are now pleasantly weary. It is a great place, very sad and wild, dotted with the dwellings of prehistoric man, strange monoliths and huts and graves.
Foothold Ruin sits on an isolated sandstone monolith with additional rooms at the base. Access up the monolith is by a set of footholds in the rockface.
The width of a monolith is the distance between monolith joints as measured along the axis of the dam. [...] In recent construction, monolith widths have been commonly set at approximately 50 feet but with some structures having monoliths ranging from 30 to 80 feet.
The Washington Monument is often described as an obelisk, and sometimes even as a "true obelisk," even though it is not. A true obelisk is a monolith, a pylon formed out of a single piece of stone.
[...] Chimney Rock State Park is one of North Carolina's newest state parks. Its most famous landmark is the park's namesake, a spectacular granite monolith known as Chimney Rock, providing panoramic views of Lake Lure, the surrounding mountains, and nearby Piedmont.
gloss: Anything massive, uniform, and unmovable, especially a towering and impersonal cultural, political, or social organization or structure.
pos: noun
tags: also
attributive
figuratively
examples: It was the setting up of generalizations of the first kind in [Charles J.] Fillmore (1966a, b) and (1968a) that awarded case grammar the role of being, besides abstract syntax, the second crack in the transformational monolith of the late sixties.
But English society is no monolith, and it is a gross simplification to force it into one mould.
Recent scholarship on colonial history has demonstrated that British America was not simply an English but rather a multicultural society. Far from being a homogeneous monolith, colonial society comprised many divergent races and ethnic groups.
For whatever reason, one knows that the Senegalese poet-president [Léopold Sédar Senghor] became the Father of the ideology, cleverly weaving a network of cultural contributions and atavistic, essential, and behavioral components into a kind of black monolith hardly acceptable to anyone.
Southern Democratic plantation masters' prestige and dominance were equivalent to monolith monarchs. They had influence around the world, especially within the political arena.
Intentionally or not, the movie [Ralph Breaks the Internet] makes Disney feel as enormous as the internet itself, containing a series of micro-targeted idiosyncrasies and in-jokes that are nonetheless controlled by a cultural monolith (whether that's Disney or whatever massive corporation owns your local ISP).
gloss: A substrate having many tiny channels that is cast as a single piece, which is used as a stationary phase for chromatography, as a catalytic surface, etc.
pos: noun
examples: The conference chairman, Alois Jungbauer, Ph.D., professor at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna, defined a monolith as a continuous stationary-phase cast as a homogeneous column in a single piece. Monoliths are further characterized by a highly interconnected network of channels, most with sizes ranging from 1 to 5 µm. The adsorptive surface is directly accessible to solutes as they pass through the column.
[W]ork performed by Gough et al. looked at the long-term culture (28 days) of craniofacial fibroblasts seeded on to monolith calcium/sodium phosphate glass surfaces.
gloss: A dead tree whose height and size have been reduced by breaking off or cutting its branches.
pos: noun
tags: UK
examples: [page 98] If a stub is to be retained, either for the reasons stated above, or when a tree is to be reduced to a "monolith" [...], unconventional methods of cutting or fracturing (not recommended in BS 3998) may be employed, [...] [page 147] Even dead standing or fallen trees are important, and so owners should be encouraged to be untidy-minded and to leave monoliths or fallen dead wood in situ.
Stumps of older fallen trees, known as upright monoliths, have incredible environmental value and can provide a home and food source for insects for decades.
Unexpectedly, even some of the monoliths are throwing out new shoots. This is great news, as these trees contain ancient woodland DNA, so are a very valuable seedbank. Further along the site, Penny shows me a famous translocated stump... the Cubbington pear tree. [...] The stump was translocated, and the trunk used as a monolith - but not before dozens of cuttings had been taken, some of which are growing nearby. And the stump? It's already throwing out dozens of new shoots as it's become re-established.
gloss: To create (something) as, or convert (one or more things) into, a monolith.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: [Fatema] Mernissi constructs a single dominant view of sexuality among Muslims while she purports to be doing sociology or anthropology. [...] [I]s it Mernissi's contention that only Islam is monolithed in stone by an overarching patriarchy?
Secondary waste solids such as fines from high-temperature filters and the bag house can be mixed with the bed product and monolithed for disposal.
gloss: To create (something) as, or convert (one or more things) into, a monolith.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: It should be noted that the parapets, also monolithing with the decking slab, contribute an important share to the effective resistance of the work.
The main construction operations are the following: [...] 101,000 cu m of pre-fabricated concrete and 89,000 cu m for monolithing pre-fabricated structures.
The idea of joint action of carrying constructions for the seismic load by monolithing horizontal and vertical joints is [the] basis of designing frameless large panel buildings for earthquake resistance [...]
Foundations were tied and monolithed, ductility was added to the structures [...] and specific measures were prescribed for each building, designed to prevent the entry of water into the ground; prohibiting wells, and channeling surface runoff.
gloss: To create (something) as, or convert (one or more things) into, a monolith.
pos: verb
tags: UK
transitive
examples: Residents who use the park regularly for sports say they are gobsmacked that the council consider cutting the tree down as the only option. But the council have said that public safety is paramount when assessing damaged trees, a branch crashing down could kill someone, and that the tree is not being cut down but just monolithed.
The go-ahead has been given to fell 23 Lawson cypress and ‘monolith’ (reduce to their main stems, without branches) four dead alder, which made up part of the woodland off Bickland Water Road.
Related words: megalith
microlith
Derived words: monolithal
monolithic
monolithically
monolithism
Translations: