Chilminar

name

name ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Synonym of Persepolis, particularly its modern ruins. historical, obsolete

    "CHILMINAR, Chelminar, or Tchelminar, the moſt beautiful piece of architecture remaining of all antiquity, being the ruins of the famous palace of Perſepolis, to which Alexander the Great, in a drunken fit, ſet fire, at the inſtigation of Thais the courtezan..."

Example

More examples

"CHILMINAR, Chelminar, or Tchelminar, the moſt beautiful piece of architecture remaining of all antiquity, being the ruins of the famous palace of Perſepolis, to which Alexander the Great, in a drunken fit, ſet fire, at the inſtigation of Thais the courtezan..."

Etymology

From Spanish Chilminara in the French translation of De Silva Figueroa's account of his travels in Persia from 1617 to 1619, from Persian چهل منار (čehel menâr, “ruins of Persepolis”), from چهل (čehel, “forty”) + منار (menâr, “minarets”), from the appearance of the ruins.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.