Definition of "stele"

stele¹

/ˈstiːli/

noun
plural steles or stelai
1. (archaeology) An upright (or formerly upright) slab containing engraved or painted decorations or inscriptions; a stela.
  Quotations
  A superior class of members...had their names inscribed upon a marble stélé or column.
  1820, T. S. Hughes, Trav. Sicily, I x 303
  It appears, that when any one of the family died, a stelè to his memory was added to the tomb.
  1825, T. D. Fosbroke, Encycl. Antiq., I v 70
  In Egypt [obelisks] belonged to the class of steles (commemorative pillars).
  1847, C. O. Müller, translated by J. Leitch, Anc. Art, §224 193
  The Australian stele, or grave-pillar.
  1884, A. Lang, Custom & Myth, section 285
2. (archaeology, uncommon) Any carved or engraved surface.
  Quotations
  Two large hieroglyphed steles incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff.
  1877, A. B. Edwards, Thousand Miles up Nile, VI 143
3. (architecture, archaeology, obsolete) An acroterion, the decoration on the ridge of an ancient Greek building such as a temple.
  Quotations
  Stele. The ornaments on the ridge of a Greek temple, answering to the antefixæ on the summit of the flank entablatures, are thus designated.
  c. 1840, Hosking, "Architecture" in Encyclopædia Britannica, III 470

stele²

noun
plural steles
1. (botany) The central core of a plant's root and stem system, especially including the vascular tissue and developed from the plerome.
  Quotations
  The stele may have—in different structures—one to many protoxylem (primitive wood) groups, and is accordingly described as monarch...diarch...triarch...tetrarch...polyarch.
  1895, Sydney Howard Vines, A Students' Text-book of Botany, section 179
  The so-called central cylinder, for which Van Tieghem has proposed the name stele (column).
  1898, Eduard Strasburger et al., translated by Hobart Charles Porter, A Text-book of Botany, section 109