temple

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the flat area on either side of the forehead

   The veins in my temple throbbed.

2. 2
   noun

   A house of worship, especially:

   The temple of Zeus was very large.

3. 3
   noun

   Any place seen as an important centre for some activity.

   a temple of commerce; a temple of drinking and dining

4. 4
   noun

   Anything regarded as important or minutely cared for.

   My body is my temple.

5. 5
   noun

   A gesture wherein the forefingers are outstretched and touch pad to pad while the other fingers are clasped together.

   Again Abdullah listened intently, his eyes closed, his ten fingers forming a temple of his hands in front of him.

6. 6
   verb

   To build a temple for; to appropriate a temple to; to temple a god

   though the Heathen (in many places) Templed and adored this drunken God

7. 7
   noun

   The slightly flatter region, on either side of the head of a vertebrate, including a human, behind the eye and forehead, above the zygomatic arch, and forward of the ear.

   Then Iael Hebers wife, tooke a naile of the tent, and tooke an hammer in her hand, and went softly vnto him, and smote the naile into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: (for he was fast asleepe, and weary;) so he died.

8. 8
   name

   A male given name from Latin.

   The two known human AIDS viruses are evolving at a rapid rate equivalent to that of influenza viruses, said Dr. Temple F. Smith of Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, an author of a new report on the AIDS virus family tree.

Etymology

From Middle English temple, from Old English templ, tempel, borrowed from Latin templum (“shrine, temple, area for auspices”). Compare Old High German tempal (“temple”), also a borrowing from the Latin.