alcove means A small recessed area set off from a larger room. It carries an Arena rating of 1700, earned across 7 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, alcove ranks #160 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #1,534 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #2,187 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #3,689 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words.
alcove is pronounced /ˈæl.kəʊv/.
Why “alcove” is a great word
A small, recessed section of a room or a secluded, shady retreat. From French *alcôve*, from Spanish *alcoba* or Portuguese *alcova*, from Arabic *al-qubba* ("the vault, the vaulted chamber"), first attested in English in the 1670s. Unlike a "niche," which is a shallow hollow for an object, or a "nook," which suggests any snug corner, an alcove is an architectural withdrawal, a space carved to hold a person. It is the curtained bed-space in an old library, the stone bench set into a garden wall, the cool, dim hollow where light falls in a softened parallelogram—a minor vault against the world's insistence, where the body finds its small triumph of shelter.
Etymology
From French alcôve, from Spanish alcoba or Portuguese alcova, from Arabic القُبَّة (al-qubba, “vault, chamber with vaulted roof”). Doublet of qubba.
noun
- A small recessed area set off from a larger room.
- A shady retreat.e.g.“The house was situated in a leafy alcove.”
- The geographical and geological term for a steep-sided hollow in the side of an exposed rock face or cliff of a homogeneous rock type, that was water eroded.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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