Definitions

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

  • noun A movable, brightly colored cone or shaft of rubber that is used to signal something to be avoided, such as a hazard or work zone on a roadway.
  • noun Football A flexible, usually padded marker that stands upright at each corner of the end zone to facilitate judgments of close plays.
  • noun A tower marking a turning point in a race among aircraft.
  • noun A vertical supporting structure, especially.
  • noun A steel tower supporting high-tension wires.
  • noun A tower or shaft supporting a wind turbine.
  • noun A structure supporting a bridge deck.
  • noun A large structure or group of structures marking an entrance or approach.
  • noun A monumental gateway in the form of a pair of truncated pyramids serving as the entrance to an ancient Egyptian temple.
  • noun A structure that attaches an aircraft engine to a plane's wing or fuselage.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In architecture, a monumental gateway to an Egyptian temple, or other important building.

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

  • noun A low tower, having a truncated pyramidal form, and flanking an ancient Egyptian gateway.
  • noun An Egyptian gateway to a large building (with or without flanking towers).
  • noun A tower, commonly of steelwork, for supporting either end of a wire, as for a telegraph line, over a long span.
  • noun Formerly, a starting derrick (the use of which is now abandoned) for an aeroplane.
  • noun A post, tower, or the like, as on an aerodrome, or flying ground, serving to bound or mark a prescribed course of flight.

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

  • noun A gateway to the inner part of an Ancient Egyptian temple
  • noun A tower-like structure, usually one of a series, used to support high-voltage electricity cables.
  • noun aviation A structure used to mount engines, missiles etc., to the underside of an aircraft wing or fuselage.
  • noun An obelisk.
  • noun A traffic cone.
  • noun American football An orange marker designating one of the four corners of the end zone in American football.

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

  • noun a tower for guiding pilots or marking the turning point in a race
  • noun a large vertical steel tower supporting high-tension power lines

Etymologies

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

[Greek pulōn, gateway, from pulē, gate.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek πυλών.

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Examples

  • The first pylon is quite near the entrance and the arcane elementals stand in a circle around it.

    Crossfire in Dire Maul: in over our heads nathreee 2008

  • The pylon is there still, a partial ruin; but the Temple, with its roof, its staircases, and its secret treasure-crypts, is in all essential respects as perfect as on the day when its splendour was given over to the spoilers.

    A Thousand Miles Up the Nile 1891

  • For those of you unfamiliar with the term "pylon," for our purposes today, a pylon is a self-contained package of six cruise missiles that can be quickly mounted to the wing of a B-52.

    DOD Briefing on B-52 Munitions and the Bent Spear Incident 2007

  • Behind the pylon is the great court of Rameses, entirely surrounded by two rows of seventy-four columns, with papyrus bud capitals and smooth shafts.

    The Critic in the Orient George Hamlin Fitch 1888

  • Typically this strategy is executed by popping out a Warp Prism near the opponents base and warping in Dark Templar's in its pylon radius; however, I was able to sneak a pylon in the corner of the opponent's starting area early in this game and simply use it.

    WN.com - Articles related to Gold slips below $1,150 as dollar hits session high 2010

  • Typically this strategy is executed by popping out a Warp Prism near the opponents base and warping in Dark Templar's in its pylon radius; however, I was able to sneak a pylon in the corner of the opponent's starting area early in this game and simply use it.

    WN.com - Articles related to Gold slips below $1,150 as dollar hits session high 2010

  • Typically this strategy is executed by popping out a Warp Prism near the opponents base and warping in Dark Templar's in its pylon radius; however, I was able to sneak a pylon in the corner of the opponent's starting area early in this game and simply use it.

    WN.com - Articles related to Gold slips below $1,150 as dollar hits session high 2010

  • Typically this strategy is executed by popping out a Warp Prism near the opponents base and warping in Dark Templar's in its pylon radius; however, I was able to sneak a pylon in the corner of the opponent's starting area early in this game and simply use it.

    WN.com - Articles related to Gold slips below $1,150 as dollar hits session high 2010

  • The pylon is to be the centerpiece of a planned underwater museum featuring relics uncovered from the Mediterranean seabed.

    Newsvine - Get Smarter Here Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press Writer 2009

  • The pylon is the first major artefact extracted from the harbour since 2002, when authorities banned further removal of major artefacts from the sea for fear it would damage them.

    Stuff.co.nz - Stuff 2009

  • Many of the blocks from the Aten temples discovered in modern times had been used as fill inside the pylons (the monumental gateways of temples), that Horemheb constructed in Karnak.

    Why Are the Noses Broken on Egyptian Statues? Edward Bleiberg 2022

Comments

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  • "Most of the dock had sunk and only a few of the larger pylons and attached sections were still standing." The Shack by WM Paul

    October 1, 2010