Definitions

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

  • adjective Having a roof or ceiling supported by rows of columns.
  • noun A building with a roof or ceiling supported by rows of columns.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In architecture, having the roof supported by pillars: as, the hypostyle hall at Karnak.
  • noun In architecture, a structure, with or without inclosing walls, the ceiling of which is supported by columns; a covered colonnade; a pillared hall: applied specifically to the many columned halls of a type characteristic of ancient Egyptian religious architecture.

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

  • adjective (Arch.) Resting upon columns; constructed by means of columns; -- especially applied to the great hall at Karnak.

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

  • adjective architecture Having a roof supported on a row of columns

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Greek hupostūlos, resting upon pillars : hupo-, hypo- + stūlos, pillar; see stā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ὑπόστυλος (hypóstylos).

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word hypostyle.

Examples

  • She stopped on the processional way a short distance from the huge pylons that marked the entrance to the hypostyle hall.

    Shadow Chase Seressia Glass 2010

  • She stopped on the processional way a short distance from the huge pylons that marked the entrance to the hypostyle hall.

    Shadow Chase Seressia Glass 2010

  • It is a small strongly built square of hewn stone, with a dome covering the solitary hypostyle to the South, and the usual minaret.

    Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah 2003

  • The building is like that of Kuba, only smaller: and the hypostyle is hung with oil lamps and ostrich eggs, the usual paltry furniture of an Arab mausoleum.

    Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah 2003

  • They had chiselled away every portrait of the false pharaoh and expunged his name from the walls and tall hypostyle columns.

    Warlock Smith, Wilbur 2001

  • Now she kept a demure and chaste demeanour as Apepi led her down the long hypostyle gallery of the temple to the sanctuary.

    Warlock Smith, Wilbur 2001

  • The sloping roof was supported by tall hypostyle columns, miniature copies of those at the temple of Karnak.

    The Seventh Scroll Smith, Wilbur 1995

  • When I looked round suddenly he was almost upon me, gliding between the pillars of the hypostyle hall towards me, slim and tall and deadly as an erect cobra.

    River God Smith, Wilbur, 1933- 1993

  • A colonnaded court, hypostyle hall and antechamber led to two doors, beyond which were two precincts and two naos, or inner sanctums.

    From This Beloved Hour Lambert, Willa 1982

  • Nor was it the Temple of Karnak, whose hypostyle hall boasted one hundred and thirty-four massive columns, any one of which might have held one hundred standing men on a capital mushroomed sixty-nine feet above the ground.

    From This Beloved Hour Lambert, Willa 1982

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "Everyone's at it, playing and parleying, circles within circles, sacred arcaded courtyard revived, hypostyle hall left to the more resourceful among them to revitalize prayer and ritual, the ten-arched loggia open to the street, where over here shkubba players keep an eye on cheaters, over there aces take all, somewhere the sound of dice and dominos, elsewhere a game of chess between two refined elderly gentlemen, pederasts surrounded by handsome boys making faces and gesticulating, sticking out tongues at any eye that lingers too long."

    Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 78 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback

    September 23, 2011