spire

Etymology 1

From Middle English spire, spyre, spier, spir, from Old English spīr, from Proto-Germanic *spīrō, *spīrǭ (“peak; point; tip; stalk”). Cognate with Dutch spier, German Low German Spier, German Spier, Spiere, Danish spir, Norwegian spir and spire, Swedish spira, Icelandic spíra.

noun

1. (now rare) The stalk or stem of a plant.
2. A young shoot of a plant; a spear.
3. Any of various tall grasses, rushes, or sedges, such as the marram, the reed canary-grass, etc.
4. A sharp or tapering point.
   A beech wood with silver firs in it rolled down the face of the hill, and the maze of leafless twigs and dusky spires cut sharp against the soft blueness of the evening sky. 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict
5. (architecture) A tapering structure built on a roof or tower, especially as one of the central architectural features of a church or cathedral roof.
   The spire of the church rose high above the town.
6. The top, or uppermost point, of anything; the summit.
7. (mining) A tube or fuse for communicating fire to the charge in blasting.

verb

1. (of a seed, plant etc.) to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate.
2. To grow upwards rather than develop horizontally.
3. (transitive) To furnish with a spire.

Etymology 2

From Old French spirer, and its source, Latin spīrō (“to breathe”).

verb

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To breathe.

Etymology 3

From Middle French spire.

noun

1. One of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil.
2. A spiral.
3. (geometry) The part of a spiral generated in one revolution of the straight line about the pole.