pagoda

Noun

pagoda (plural pagodas)

1. (Hinduism, obsolete) A Hindu temple.
   • This King of Calycut was a Bramene, as others his Predeceſſours alſo were, which amongſt the Malabars are Prieſts, and for that it is a cuſtome and anncient order obſerved, that all the Kings doe dye in one Pagode, which is the houſe of praiers to their Idolls...1582, Nicholas Lichefield translating Fernão Lopes de Castanheda as The Historie of the Discouerie and Conquest of the East Indias..., Vol. I, p. 34
   • All your Religious Women who assist at the Performances of Pagod Ceremonies, are unexceptionably great Whores.1719, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg et al., translated by Jenkin Thomas Philipps, Thirty-Four Conferences between the Danish Missionaries and the Malabarian Bramans..., page 89
2. (Hinduism, uncommon) A tall building in an Indian, Burmese, or Thai style erected at Hindu or Buddhist temples in South and Southeast Asia, a stupa surmounted with a high point.
3. A multi-storey tower in a Chinese style used in various contexts across East Asia and Nepal, usually with upturned curving roofs above each storey.
   • He declared he would ascend the highest pinnacle of the highest pagod in Japan.1769, Tobias Smollett, The History and Adventures of an Atom, volume II, page 170
   • On the journey southwards over the flat, fertile plains, paddy fields stretched away on each side of the line, and the landscape was broken only by wooden villages and stately pagodas.1943 November and December, G. T. Porter, “The Lines Behind the Lines in Burma”, in Railway Magazine, page 325
4. (historical) A unit of currency, a coin made of gold or half gold, issued by various dynasties and colonial powers in southern India.
   • [T]he Mahrattas having offered Alimerdy Khan his liberty for a lak of Pagodas; he does in the Nabob's name desire that the Governor of Madras would receive jewels and money to that amount into his custody, […]1693 January 2 (date written; Gregorian calendar), J. Talboys Wheeler, compiler, “Governorship of Mr. Nathaniel Higginson. 1692–1698.”, in Madras in the Olden Time: Being a History of the Presidency...
   • I, in about two hours, notwithstanding the utmost caution, found myself minus upwards of six hundred pagodas […] .1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 240