| / English Dictionary |
MANTELPIECE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Shelf that projects from wall above fireplace
Synonyms:
chimneypiece; mantel; mantelpiece; mantle; mantlepiece
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("mantelpiece" is a kind of...):
shelf (a support that consists of a horizontal surface for holding objects)
Holonyms ("mantelpiece" is a part of...):
fireplace; hearth; open fireplace (an open recess in a wall at the base of a chimney where a fire can be built)
Context examples:
Her father stood leaning his head on the mantelpiece and did not turn as she came in, but her mother stretched out her arms as if for help, and Jo went to comfort her without a word.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
I can remember that a black clock was ticking loudly upon the mantelpiece, and that every now and then, amid the rumble of the hackney coaches, we could hear boisterous laughter from some inner chamber.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
One of these he placed in his hall in the house at Kennington Road, and the other on the mantelpiece of the surgery at Lower Brixton.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Now some of that litter from the mantelpiece.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the mantelpiece with his right hand.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He lit the two candles which stood upon the mantelpiece, and then he proceeded to turn back the corner of the carpet in the neighbourhood of the door.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
"How do you know?—you never tried it. How very serious—how very solemn you look: and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head" (taking one from the mantelpiece).
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than surprise.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock's feathers displayed over the mantelpiece—I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
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