Definitions

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

  • noun A religious building of East Asia and Southeast Asia, especially a multistory Buddhist tower with widely overhanging eaves separating each level, erected as a memorial or shrine.
  • noun A stupa.
  • noun A structure, such as a garden pavilion, built in imitation of a multistory Buddhist tower.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small ornamental structure made in imitation of an Eastern pagoda: especially, such a building in the streets of a city in which various small articles, such as tea, etc., are sold.
  • noun In the far East, as India, China, Burma, etc., a sacred tower, usually more or less pyramidal in outline, richly carved, painted, or otherwise adorned, and of several stories, connected or not with a temple.
  • noun An idol.
  • noun [Formerly also pagody; so called with ref. to the figure of a pagoda on the coin. The natives in Madras called the coin hun and varahā (Telugu) or varāhan (Tamil).] A gold coin current in India from the sixteenth century.
  • noun [capitalized] [NL.] In zoology, a genus of mollusks.

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

  • noun A term by which Europeans designate religious temples and tower-like buildings of the Hindoos and Buddhists of India, Farther India, China, and Japan, -- usually but not always, devoted to idol worship.
  • noun rare An idol.
  • noun A gold or silver coin, of various kinds and values, formerly current in India. The Madras gold pagoda was worth about three and a half rupees.

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

  • noun An Asian religious building, especially a multistory Buddhist tower, erected as a shrine or temple.
  • noun An ornamental structure, of that design, erected in a park or garden.

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

  • noun an Asian temple; usually a pyramidal tower with an upward curving roof

Etymologies

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

[Portuguese pagode, perhaps from Tamil pagavadi, from Sanskrit bhagavatī, goddess, from feminine of bhagavat-, blessed, from bhagaḥ, good fortune; see bhag- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Persian بت‌کده (bot-kade), an idol temple, from بت (bot, idol) + کده (kade, temple).

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Examples

  • "I think I shall put into the tablecloth a certain pagoda I remember."

    The Blue Cat of Castle Town 1949

  • The four-storey pagoda, which is almost four feet high and one-and-a-half feet wide, is thought by archaeologists to be one of the 84,000 pagodas commissioned by Ashoka the Great in the second century BC to house the remains of the Buddha.

    "Buddha's Skull Found in Nanking?" Jan 2008

  • Although the age and source of the Buddhas is unknown, four additional silver and bronze statues were also found beneath the pagoda, which is thought to be at least 200 years old, leading archaeologists to suspect that the diminutive Buddhas themselves are older.

    Baby Buddhas 2002

  • One British visitor, Henry Yule, dubbed the pagoda an

    An "Extraordinary Folly"? 2000

  • The area around the pagoda was also mined, except for a narrow corridor which ran from the pagoda to the northwest corner of the compound

    DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE REPORT 1996

  • The pagoda was a shopping plaza on Bolsa Avenue where no sign was printed in English.

    The Concrete Blonde Connelly, Michael, 1956- 1994

  • The pagoda was a shopping plaza on Bolsa Avenue where no sign was printed in English.

    The Black Echo Connelly, Michael, 1956- 1992

  • To the right of the pagoda were the heavily embellished tombs of the most venerated monks who had lived here.

    Floating City Lustbader, Eric 1990

  • The pagoda is the most venerated of all Buddhist places of worship, containing as it does not only the eight sacred hairs of Gautama, but also relics of the three Buddhas who preceded him.

    Ranching, Sport and Travel Thomas Carson

  • The pagoda was the nearest cover to them, and they raced for it with all their speed, the quick-firing Mannlichers scourging them with a whistling shower of lead as they flew.

    Jack Haydon's Quest John Finnemore

Comments

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  • Also a type of coin; for usage note see johannes.

    March 4, 2008