Word.ws English Dictionary

alcove

/ˈæl.kəʊv/US/ˈæl.koʊv/

alcove noun: a small recessed area set off from a larger room.

alcove: a small recessed area set off from a larger room
Image: Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

alcove (plural alcoves)

  1. A small recessed area set off from a larger room.
    • It was very different from such bookstores as he had been accustomed to patronize. Two stories of the old house had been thrown into one: the lower space was divided into little alcoves; above, a gallery ran round the wall, which carried books to the ceiling.1919, Christopher Morley, “The Haunted Bookshop”, in The Haunted Bookshop, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 4
  2. A shady retreat.
    • The house was situated in a leafy alcove.
  3. (countable) The geographical and geological term for a steep-sided hollow in the side of an exposed rock face or cliff of a homogeneous rock type, that was water eroded.

Verb

alcove (third-person singular simple present alcoves, present participle alcoving, simple past and past participle alcoved)

  1. (rare, transitive) To furnish (something) with an alcove or to form an alcovelike recess.

alcove meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

alcove in Tamil

மாடம், அறையின் ஒதுப்புறம், கவிகைமாடம், மாடக்குழி, பள்ளியறை, வேணிலகம்

alcove in Urdu

محراب, شہ نشین, قُبَہ, پَسِ گوشَہ, قَدرَتی خَلوَت گاہ, کُنج

alcove in Malayalam

niche, recess, nook
ഭിത്തിമാടം, ഭിത്തിയിലെ തട്ട്, ഗുപ്തസ്ഥാനം, മറവുള്ളസ്ഥലം, ചുമർപ്പൊത്ത്, മച്ചുപലക

Examples of alcove in a sentence

  • I wedged into the alcove and listened carefully.
  • Stairs descended to larders, pantries were cleverly nooked into alcoves, and beyond the open windows sprawled lush gardens.
  • Past the bar was a little area in an alcove that contained a few tall, round tables and bar chairs.

All 11 example sentences with alcove

Forms of alcove

Noun
pluralalcoves
Verb
third-person singular presentalcoves
present participlealcoving
past participlealcoved
pastalcoved

Plural of alcove: alcoves

Origin of alcove

From French alcôve, from Spanish alcoba or Portuguese alcova, from Arabic القُبَّة (al-qubba, “vault, chamber with vaulted roof”). Doublet of qubba.

Words formed from alcove

Questions about alcove

What does alcove mean?
Alcove means a small recessed area set off from a larger room.
What is alcove in Tamil?
Alcove in Tamil is மாடம், அறையின் ஒதுப்புறம், கவிகைமாடம். See Alcove meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is alcove?
Alcove can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce alcove?
Alcove is pronounced /ˈæl.kəʊv/ (UK).
What is the plural of alcove?
The plural of alcove is alcoves.

Words near alcove in the dictionary

  1. alcotourist
  2. alcotourists
  3. Alcott
  4. Alcottian
  5. Alcotts
  6. alcove
  7. alcoved
  8. alcovelike
  9. alcoves
  10. alcoving
  11. alcoxyl

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: alcove (page history and authors); alcove (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); alcove (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); alcove (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-alcove.wav.

Cite this entry: “alcove.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alcove. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.