Word.ws English Dictionary

steles

/ˈstiːliːz/

steles is the plural of stele.

steles is the plural of stela.

Meaning of stele

Noun (1)

stele (plural steles or stelai)

  1. An upright (or formerly upright) slab containing engraved or painted decorations or inscriptions; a stela.
    • A superior class of members...had their names inscribed upon a marble stélé or column.1820, T. S. Hughes, Trav. Sicily, I x 303
  2. (uncommon) Any carved or engraved surface.
    • Two large hieroglyphed steles incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff.1877, A. B. Edwards, Thousand Miles up Nile, VI 143
  3. (obsolete) An acroterion, the decoration on the ridge of an ancient Greek building such as a temple.
    • Stele. The ornaments on the ridge of a Greek temple, answering to the antefixæ on the summit of the flank entablatures, are thus designated.c. 1840, Hosking, "Architecture" in Encyclopædia Britannica, III 470

Noun (2)

stele (plural steles)

  1. The central core of a plant's root and stem system, especially including the vascular tissue and developed from the plerome.
    • The stele may have—in different structures—one to many protoxylem (primitive wood) groups, and is accordingly described as monarch...diarch...triarch...tetrarch...polyarch.1895, Sydney Howard Vines, A Students' Text-book of Botany, section 179

Meaning of stela

Noun

stela (plural stelas or stelae or steles)

  1. An obelisk or upright stone pillar, usually as a primitive commemoration or gravestone.
    • In the courts of the houses lie many round stelæ, or pillars, once placed on the graves of the Athenians.1776, R. Chandler, Trav. Greece, VIII 35
    Synonyms:
    stele

Synonyms of steles

Forms of steles

alternative formstélés
alternative formstelès

Questions about steles

What is steles the plural of?
Steles is the plural of stele.
How do you pronounce steles?
Steles is pronounced /ˈstiːliːz/.

Words near steles in the dictionary

  1. stelai
  2. stelar
  3. stelas
  4. stele
  5. stelene
  6. steles
  7. Stelfox
  8. Stelfoxes
  9. Stelian
  10. stelic
  11. stelidia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: steles (page history and authors); stele (page history and authors); stela (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)-Vealhurl-steles.wav.

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