tower

Etymology 1

From Middle English tour, tur, tor, from Old English tūr, tor, torr ("tower; rock"; > English tor) and Old French tour, toer, tor; both from Latin turris (“a tower”), Ancient Greek τύρρις (túrrhis) (Hesychius), τύρσις (túrsis). Compare Τυρρηνός (Turrhēnós, “Etruscan”). Compare Scots tour, towr, towre (“tower”), West Frisian toer (“tower”), Dutch toren (“tower”), German Turm (“tower”), Danish tårn (“tower”), Swedish torn (“tower”), Icelandic turn (“tower”), Welsh tŵr. Doublet of tor.

noun

1. A very tall iron-framed structure, usually painted red and white, on which microwave, radio, satellite, or other communication antennas are installed; mast.
2. A similarly framed structure with a platform or enclosed area on top, used as a lookout for spotting fires, plane crashes, fugitives, etc.
3. A water tower.
4. A control tower.
5. Any very tall building or structure; skyscraper.
   The Sears Tower
6. (figurative) An item of various kinds, such as a computer case, that is higher than it is wide.
7. (informal) An interlocking tower.
8. (figurative) A strong refuge; a defence.
9. (historical) A tall fashionable headdress worn in the time of King William III and Queen Anne.
10. (obsolete) High flight; elevation.
11. The sixteenth trump or Major Arcana card in many Tarot decks, usually deemed an ill omen.
12. (cartomancy) The nineteenth Lenormand card, representing structure, bureaucracy, stability and loneliness.
13. (collective) A group of giraffes

Etymology 2

From Middle English touren, torren, torrien, from Old English *torrian, from the noun (see above).

verb

1. (intransitive) To be very tall.
   The office block towered into the sky.
   Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. 2013-08-03, “Revenge of the nerds”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
2. (intransitive) To be high or lofty; to soar.
   When Hope, the eagle that tower’d, could see No cliff beyond him in the sky, His pinions were bent droopingly — And homeward turn’d his soften’d eye. 1829, Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”, in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems
   To the left towers the Jungfrau, with the train heading directly towards it. 1960 December, Voyageur, “The Mountain Railways of the Bernese Oberland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 752
3. (obsolete, transitive) To soar into.

Etymology 3

From tow + -er.

noun

1. One who tows.
   But as the tower and towee reached the cross-roads again, another car, negligently driven, came round the corner, hit the Morris, and severed the tow rope, sending the unfortunate car back again into the shop window[…] 1933, Henry Sturmey, H. Walter Staner, The Autocar