Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A portal tomb.
- noun A prehistoric monument consisting of a group of megaliths, sometimes arranged in a circle or in concentric circles.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In archœol., a structure consisting of a large, flat, unhewn stone resting horizontally upon three or more upright stones, of common occurrence in parts of Great Britain, as in Wales, Devonshire, Cornwall, and Ireland, and in Brittany and other parts of Europe.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Archæol.) A monument of rough stones composed of one or more large ones supported in a horizontal position upon others. They are found chiefly in countries inhabited by the ancient Celts, and are of a period anterior to the introduction of Christianity into these countries.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
dolmen or ancient undergroundtomb .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a prehistoric megalithic tomb typically having two large upright stones and a capstone
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Some English writers apply the term cromlech to such a structure, quite incorrectly.
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On firmer ground is coracle, which occurs in Salesbury's Dictionary in English and Welsh (1547) as the English equivalent of kwrwgyl ` round boat, 'and the archaeological term cromlech, which is used in Owen's Pembrokeshire
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And again beyond the cromlech was a hut, shaped like a beehive of straw, built of many stones most wonderfully, both walls and roof.
A Prince of Cornwall A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex 1884
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A dolmen (also known as cromlech (Welsh), anta, Hünengrab, Hunebed, Goindol, quoit, and portal dolmen) is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone (table).
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A dolmen (also known as cromlech (Welsh), anta, Hünengrab, Hunebed, Goindol, quoit, and portal dolmen) is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone (table).
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What you can see to the left of the cromlech is the fence, but foreshortened.
Army Rumour Service 2009
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444 A cromlech is a prehistoric arrangement of stones, a flat stone resting on three or more stones, often associated with a tomb.
Later Articles and Reviews W.B. Yeats 2000
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Dr. Owain Pughe considered the word "cromlech" (_crwm-llech_, an inclined or flat stone,) to be merely a popular name, having no reference to the original purpose of the structure.
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When these stones form an ellipse, and have no head-covering, one must say: There is a "cromlech"; when one perceives a stone laid horizontally upon two upright stones, one is confronted by a "lichaven" or a "trilithe."
Over Strand and Field Gustave Flaubert 1850
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The "cromlech," i.e. a huge flattish stone resting on three stones set upright, of which we have so many examples in Great Britain, is not represented in Japan excepting where a group of dolmens has been long used as a quarry for building stones.
Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity [microform] 1770
qms commented on the word cromlech
A menhir need not stand alone -
A trilithon's two, plus one prone.
If dolmens are context
Consider the cromlechs,
Those sarsen-built tables of stone.
March 18, 2015