A tower is a tall structure, usually taller than it is wide, often by a significant margin. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires.
Towers are generally built to take advantage of their height, and can stand alone on the ground, or as part of a larger structure or device such as a fortified building or as an integral part of a bridge, the term also denoting a raised structure on a ship or other vehicle.
Famous quotes containing the word tower:
“Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word “sophisticate” means, very simply, “obscene.” A sophisticated story is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a “sophisticate” means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)