Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Constituting a monolith.
  • adjective Massive, solid, and uniform.
  • adjective Constituting or acting as a single, often rigid, uniform whole.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Made of one mass of artificial stone, as a concrete of broken stone, cement, and sand, without joints: used in structures such as mills and houses, dams, retaining-walls, and bridge abutments and piers, floors, columns, and other similar constructions.
  • Formed of a single stone, as an obelisk or the shaft of a column.
  • Consisting of monoliths: as, a monolithic circle.
  • Of or pertaining to a monolith.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to a monolith; consisting of a single stone.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or resembling a monolith.
  • adjective Having a massive, unchanging structure that does not permit individual variation.
  • adjective computing consisting of a single program using a single memory-addressing space

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective characterized by massiveness and rigidity and total uniformity
  • adjective imposing in size or bulk or solidity

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The word monolithic has appeared in 79 New York Times articles in the past year, including on Aug. 26 in "Beats, Bikes, Skateboards and the Big Time" by Melena Ryzik:

    NYT > Home Page By THE LEARNING NETWORK 2012

  • Learn more about the word "monolithic" and see usage examples across a range of subjects on the Vocabulary.com dictionary.

    NYT > Home Page By THE LEARNING NETWORK 2012

  • Christians to "stand up" to what he describes as a monolithic Muslim threat.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2010

  • Often, Saudi Arabia is described as monolithic and insensitive to modernity and liberalization.

    The Coming Revolution Walid Phares 2010

  • Religions look monolithic from a distance, but closer up they are a collection of debates.

    Late news from Wittenberg 2005

  • Whoever planted these bombs might view London in monolithic terms (a Crusader city, maybe?), but that bears no relation to the make-up of the city itself.

    london 2005

  • Religions look monolithic from a distance, but closer up they are a collection of debates.

    March 2005 2005

  • Religions look monolithic from a distance, but closer up they are a collection of debates.

    Archive 2005-03-01 2005

  • Thus the Times culture, which appears so monolithic from the outside, actually consists of two distinct and parallel cultures, each fully cognizant of the other: the culture of achievement and the culture of complaint.

    My Times 2004

  • Thus the Times culture, which appears so monolithic from the outside, actually consists of two distinct and parallel cultures, each fully cognizant of the other: the culture of achievement and the culture of complaint.

    My Times 2004

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