from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A roof spout in the form of a grotesque or fantastic creature projecting from a gutter to carry rainwater clear of the wall.
- n. A grotesque ornamental figure or projection.
- n. A person of bizarre or grotesque appearance.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A carved grotesque figure on a spout which conveys water away from the gutters.
- n. Any decorative carved grotesque figure on a building.
- n. A fictional winged creature.
- n. An ugly woman.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A spout projecting from the roof gutter of a building, often carved grotesquely.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A spout projecting from the gutter of a building, or connected with it by an opening, for the purpose of carrying off the water clear from the wall.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. an ornament consisting of a grotesquely carved figure of a person or animal
- n. a spout that terminates in a grotesquely carved figure of a person or animal
She had learned that the word gargoyle, from the French, was related to gargouille, which meant “gullet.”
In 1920s New York City, Professor Ernest Baxter, an expert in all things arcane; Mindy Markus, a scrappy flapper; and Roscoe, a gargoyle from the Bronx, are The Night Owls.
I'm not entirely sure this is a gargoyle from the French: to gargle as, to be one, it has to have a water spout in its mouth.
The origin of the word gargoyle and its use by the Church can be traced back to a 7th century dragon known in France as gargouille or Goji.
Also, XUP informs me that the gargoyle is a candle holder as well; I always wondered what that hole was for.
The gargoyle was a born storyteller, and he'd rarely had as appreciative an audience as Hosea.
Behind the gargoyle was a door, presumably leading into the kitchen.
With a few strokes of my mental paintbrush, I altered Gus's features until the gargoyle was the mirror image of myself.
One interesting object in the show connecting Egyptian magic to Judeo-Christian tradition is a lion-headed "gargoyle" that most likely adorned a temple dating to the Late (525-332 B.C.) or Ptolemaic (332-30 B.C.) periods.
At first I tried calling him by a different name--I was going to call him Grendel because he looks like a strange little creature and is kind of gargoyle-esque.