mon·o·lith  (m ŏn ə-l ĭth ′)
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n.1. A large block of stone, especially one used in architecture or sculpture. 2. Something, such as a column or monument, made from one large block of stone. 3. An outcropping, cliff, or mountain having the appearance of a single block of stone: "On a waterway of grand pilot marks, the finest lay just ahead, Beacon Rock, a distinctive black monolith some eight hundred feet high" (William Least Heat-Moon). 4. Something suggestive of a large block of stone, as in immovability, massiveness, or uniformity: "Standing against a global Communism it took to be monolithic, the Pentagon wanted to be taken as a monolith" (William Carroll).
[French monolithe, from Greek monolithos, consisting of a single stone : mono-, mono- + lithos, stone.] |
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