altarpiece
/ˈɑl.təɹˌpis/
altarpiece noun: a work of art suspended above and behind an altar in a church.
Noun
altarpiece (plural altarpieces)
- a work of art suspended above and behind an altar in a church
- I walked across the concrete to examine the altarpiece of the atomic age. A large crack ran through it.2008 December 15, David Samuels, “Atomic John: A truck driver uncovers secrets about the first nuclear bombs”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 12 Mar 2015
- “It’s this snaggletoothed, little bird-footed homunculus caricature,” Bourneuf said. “Many artists at this time were trying to make new altarpieces. Klee tended to take a very skeptical distance from the sort of grandiose projects of many of his expressionist peers, so I think it’s actually kind of...2025 May 7, Nina Siegal, “A Rarely Seen Angel With a Lesson From History”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 08 May 2025
Forms of altarpiece
| plural | altarpieces |
|---|
Origin of altarpiece
From altar + piece.
Questions about altarpiece
- What does altarpiece mean?
- Altarpiece means a work of art suspended above and behind an altar in a church.
- What part of speech is altarpiece?
- Altarpiece is a noun.
- How do you pronounce altarpiece?
- Altarpiece is pronounced /ˈɑl.təɹˌpis/ (US).
- What is the plural of altarpiece?
- The plural of altarpiece is altarpieces.
Words near altarpiece in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: altarpiece (page history and authors). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-NaomiAmethyst-altarpiece.wav.
Cite this entry: “altarpiece.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/altarpiece. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.