tower

1. a tall, usually square or circular structure, sometimes part of a larger building and usually built for a specific purpose

2. a mobile structure used in medieval warfare to attack a castle, etc.

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Tower

A tall structure designed for observation, communication, or defense. A bell tower is synonymous with the term “campanile”; church towers were used for hanging bells, hence the use of the term “belfry.”

What does it mean when you dream about a tower?

A tower may be a symbol of vigilance (a watch-tower) or a symbol of punishment and imprisonment (a guard tower). Scholarship and abstract ideas that seem to be isolated from everyday life are sometimes said to be the purview of someone who lives in an “ivory tower.” Similarly, the invitation to “come down from your tower” (ivory or otherwise) is an invitation to rejoin life. As in the fairy tale Rapunsel, perhaps the dreamer should “let her hair down” and become more accessible to others.

tower

[tau̇·ər]

(chemical engineering)

A vertical, cylindrical vessel used in chemical and petroleum processing to increase the degree of separation of liquid mixtures by distillation or extraction. Also known as column.

(electromagnetism)

A tall metal structure used as a transmitting antenna, or used with another such structure to support a transmitting antenna wire.

(engineering)

A concrete, metal, or timber structure that is relatively high for its length and width, and used for various purposes, including the support of electric power transmission lines, radio and television antennas, and rockets and missiles prior to launching.

(mathematics)

For a set S with a given algebraic structure, this is a set of subsets, S₀= S, S₁, S₂, … , S_n, such that S_{i +1}is a subset of S_i, i = 1, 2, … , n- 1, and each S_iis closed under all possible operations in the algebraic structure of S.

tower

A structure or building characterized by its relatively great height as compared with its horizontal dimensions; also see shot tower and torreón.

tower

(1) A vertical computer cabinet. See tower case.

(2) A self-standing, vertical post that is designed to hold one or more antennas. Very often, the term refers to both the tower and antennas; for example, a cellular tower.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Tower

originally towers were constructed for defense purposes (watchtowers, fortress towers, places of imprisonment, and so forth) and for signaling (lighthouses); later there developed towers for religious purposes (belfries, minarets), civic towers (town halls, often with a municipal clock), and engineering towers (water towers, radio and television towers, silos, and the like). Rising above the surrounding structures, expressive and dynamic in composition, towers often are the main dominating high motif of a group of buildings and a kind of city emblem. Outstanding models of towers include the Leaning Tower of Pisa (1174–1372; height, 56 m); the north tower of the Strasbourg Cathedral (1399–1439; height, 42 m); the Kremlin Tower in Moscow (15th—17th centuries); the Eiffel Tower in Paris, built as an emblem of 19th century technical achievements for the World’s Fair (1889; height c. 300 m; engineer, A. G. Eiffel); the steel radio tower designed by engineer V. G. Shukhov in Moscow (1921; height, 148 m); the reinforced concrete tower topped by a 51-meter steel structure in Stuttgart (1954–66; height, c. 160 m; architect, F. Leonhardt). Modern towers are constructed from steel, wood, reinforced concrete, stone (television towers, spaceport towers, radio towers, water towers, silos and so on). The structural element of the base of a steel or wooden tower usually is a spatial shaft frame; the section of the base can be circular, square, rectangular, triangular, or multiangular. The base of a tower built of reinforced concrete or stone (brick) in most cases has a round section.

Towers are subject basically to meteorological stress—wind, temperature, and freezing. Calculations used in constructing towers are based on general rules of construction mechanics; a static calculation to determine durability, stability, and the degree of deformation, as well as dynamic calculations, are carried out. The highest tower in the world is that of the All-Union Television Center in Moscow (1961–68). It has a height of 533 m and consists of two parts—reinforced concrete (up to the 385-meter mark) and metal (architects, D. I. Burdin, M. A. Shkud, L. N. Shchipakin; engineers, N. V. Nikitin, B. A. Zlobin; Lenin Prize, 1970).

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

At the head of the Pont aux Changeurs, behind which one beheld the Seine foaming beneath the wheels of the Pont aux Meuniers, there was the Chalelet, no longer a Roman tower, as under Julian the Apostate, but a feudal tower of the thirteenth century, and of a stone so hard that the pickaxe could not break away so much as the thickness of the fist in a space of three hours; there was the rich square bell tower of Saint- Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles all frothing with carvings, already admirable, although it was not finished in the fifteenth century.

The old Louvre of Philip Augustus, that immense edifice whose great tower rallied about it three and twenty chief towers, not to reckon the lesser towers, seemed from a distance to be enshrined in the Gothic roofs of the Hôtel d'Alençon, and the Petit-Bourbon.

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As Tara of Helium crept over the brow of the hill down toward the valley, her presence was hidden by the darkness of the night from the sight of any chance observer who might be loitering by a window in the nearby tower. Cluros, the farther moon, was just rising above the horizon to commence his leisurely journey through the heavens.

She groped her way through the darkness, giving the tower and its enclosure as wide a berth as possible.

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As we went down, I sat in the tower with the searchlight projecting its seemingly feeble rays ahead.

A shiver ran down into the tower as the thing closed upon the periscope.

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"Never mind girls," said Fanshaw impatiently, "there are plenty of them in the world, but not many things like the Pendragon Tower. As you may easily suppose, plenty of superstitions and scandals have followed in the track of the Spaniard's curse; and no doubt, as you would put it, any accident happening to this Cornish family would be connected with it by rural credulity.

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A hundred feet beneath lay jagged granite boulders at the brink of a frightful chasm upon which the tower abutted; and if not upon the boulders, then at the chasm's bottom, lay death, should a foot slip but once, or clutching fingers loose their hold for the fraction of an instant.

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I talked to that banshee myself an hour ago, and I sent that banshee up to the tower and told her to sing out like that if she could get a glimpse of our friend writing his proclamation."

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Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step to the bat, it's your innings."

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Doubtless, the height of the tower, seated as it was on the hill-top, the rushing of the ceaseless wind, the hypnotic effect of the lofty altitude of the speck in the sky at which he gazed, and the rushing of the paper messengers up the string till sight of them was lost in distance, all helped to further affect his brain, undoubtedly giving way under the strain of beliefs and circumstances which were at once stimulating to the imagination, occupative of his mind, and absorbing.

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The same order which I have directed here should be observed also in the country; for there also their magistrates such as the surveyors of the woods and overseers of the grounds, must necessarily have their common tables and their towers, for the purpose of protection against an enemy.

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