rotunda
/ɹoʊˈtʌndə/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.78 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A Gothic typeface used in early printed books in Northern Italy, based on a rounded script developed in the 13th cent.; the manuscript hand on which this typeface was based.
noun
noun
A form of cupola that has pentagons rather than squares or rectangles.
name
The United States Capitol rotunda.
Example Sentences
- "The rotunda begun but never completed by Abbot Wulfric (1047–59) at St Augustine’s Abbey as a link between the church of St Mary and that of St Peter and St Paul is an unusual and ambitious example of mid-eleventh-century English architecture which partly survives (fig. 4.6, top). […] Many of these rotundae are known to have had a special funerary function (as was the case at Canterbury)."
- "The purely Greek character of the temple is revealed in the fact that there is no portico aligning the structure; Roman tholoi and rotundae are usually distinguished by a portico."
- "Access to the shafts is gained via a brick entrance rotunda below a glass dome. The walls of these rotundae are built over the outer edge of caissons which hold the shafts; […]"
- "TPLEX Rotunda is a roundabout located in Rosario, La Union."
- "No African-Americans have lain in state in the Rotunda, and only two have lain there in honor: Mrs. Parks in 2005 and Officer Jacob Joseph Chestnut, a Capitol Police officer killed in the line of duty, in 1998."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin rotunda, from rotundus (“round”). In the architectural sense, from Sancta Maria Rotunda (the name for a church in the Pantheon).
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɹoʊˈtʌndə/
- British English: /ɹə(ʊ)ˈtʌndə/