Word.ws English Dictionary

belfries

/ˈbɛlfɹiz/

belfries is the plural of belfry.

Meaning of belfry

Noun

belfry (plural belfries)

  1. A tower or steeple typically containing bells, especially as part of a church.
    • “You know, this house does have a belfry filled with local bats. Maybe Laszlo went up there.” “Oh, so like my darling perverted husband, to sniff out the local bordello immediately upon arrival. [chuckles] Could you take me to the belfry?”2023 August 31, William Meny & Paul Simms, “A Weekend at Morrigan Manor” (9:33 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 5, episode 9, spoken by The Guide (Kristen Schaal)
  2. A part of a large tower or steeple, specifically for containing bells.
    • From the belfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[The Cyclops]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
  3. (dialectal) A shed.
  4. (obsolete) A movable tower used in sieges.
  5. (obsolete) An alarm-tower; a watchtower possibly containing an alarm-bell.

Questions about belfries

What is belfries the plural of?
Belfries is the plural of belfry.
How do you pronounce belfries?
Belfries is pronounced /ˈbɛlfɹiz/.

Words near belfries in the dictionary

  1. belfosdil
  2. Belfrage
  3. Belfrages
  4. Belfrayden
  5. belfried
  6. belfries
  7. belfry
  8. Belg.
  9. Belgae
  10. Belgaon
  11. belgard

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: belfries (page history and authors); belfry (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.

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