Rotunda
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A round building, usually small, often with a dome.
"The rotunda begun but never completed by Abbot Wulfric (1047–59) at St Augustine’s Abbey as a link between the church of St Mary and that of St Peter and St Paul is an unusual and ambitious example of mid-eleventh-century English architecture which partly survives (fig. 4.6, top). […] Many of these rotundae are known to have had a special funerary function (as was the case at Canterbury)."
- 2 a large circular room wordnet
- 3 A Gothic typeface used in early printed books in Northern Italy, based on a rounded script developed in the 13th cent.; the manuscript hand on which this typeface was based.
- 4 a building having a circular plan and a dome wordnet
- 5 Alternative spelling of rotonda. Philippines, alt-of, alternative
"TPLEX Rotunda is a roundabout located in Rosario, La Union."
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- 6 A form of cupola that has pentagons rather than squares or rectangles.
- 1 The United States Capitol rotunda.
"No African-Americans have lain in state in the Rotunda, and only two have lain there in honor: Mrs. Parks in 2005 and Officer Jacob Joseph Chestnut, a Capitol Police officer killed in the line of duty, in 1998."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The rotunda begun but never completed by Abbot Wulfric (1047–59) at St Augustine’s Abbey as a link between the church of St Mary and that of St Peter and St Paul is an unusual and ambitious example of mid-eleventh-century English architecture which partly survives (fig. 4.6, top). […] Many of these rotundae are known to have had a special funerary function (as was the case at Canterbury)."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin rotunda, from rotundus (“round”). In the architectural sense, from Sancta Maria Rotunda (the name for a church in the Pantheon).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.