dome

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /dəʊm/, US /doʊm/^[1]

Etymology

In its main sense it is borrowed from French dôme,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Occitan doma in Barnhart and Etymonline,^[2][3] or from Italian duomo (“cathedral, dome”) in Hoad, Merriam-Webster and the NODE,^[4][5][6] ultimately from Ancient Greek δῶμα (dôma, “house, housetop”) or Latin domus (“house”),^[2][3][4][7] from Proto-Indo-European *dem- (“house, household”).^[3] An earlier English dome, a house or stately building (1513), was taken directly from the Latin word.^[2][8][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A house or stately building: 1513, a sense now only poetic.^[8][2][5]

Semantic evolution

A cathedral church is an obsolete sense of 1691, after the Italian and German use of their words for God's house.^[8][2][3] The rounded vault forming a roof, the cupola that often crowned the crossing of a cathedral, is from 1656, in Blount's Glossographia.^[2][8][3] The vault of a cave or of the sky is from 1727, and a rounded mountain summit from 1788.^[8] In geology a dome is a structure whose layers slope away in all directions (1833).^[8][9] In slang the head is the dome (1891).^[8][10] The verb, to cover with a dome, is from 1876.^[5]

Timeline

• 1513 – a stately building.^[8]
• 1656 – a rounded roof.^[2][8]
• 1691 – a cathedral (obsolete).^[8]
• 1727 – a natural dome.^[8]
• 1891 – the head (slang).^[8]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A rounded roof or vault, shaped like half a sphere.
2. Something shaped like this.
3. (slang) The human head.
4. (geology) A structure in which rock layers slope away in all directions from a centre.

Verb

1. To cover with a dome, or to shape like one.

Word family

• domal
• domelike
• astrodome
• brachydome
• domical
• geodome
• macrodome
• radome

Related words

• domestic
• domicile
• timber
• duomo

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin