promontory
(ˈprɒməntərɪ)
Also 7 -ary, promentory.
[ad. med.L. prōmontōri-um, alteration (after mont-em mount n.1) of L. prōmunturi-um a mountain ridge, a headland, promontory; referred by some to prōminēre to jut forward.]
1. A point of high land which juts out into the sea or other expanse of water beyond the line of coast; a headland.
| 1548 Udall, etc. Erasm. Par. Acts xiii. 46 Barnabas and Saul went to Seleucia, whiche is a great promontorye, or peake on the weste parte of Antioche. 1553 Eden Treat. Newe Ind. (Arb.) 8 Euen vnto the promontorie or landes ende of the people, called Cimbri. 1559 W. Cuningham Cosmogr. Glasse 80 The parallele.., goth by the promontory of good hope. 1669 Gale Crt. Gentiles i. i. viii. 44 Corsica..called by the Grecians..the Horny Iland; because of its many Promontories, and angles. 1725 Pope Odyss. x. 221 From yonder Promontory's brow, I view'd the coast. 1876 Green Stray Stud. 60 Monaco stands on a promontory of rock which falls in bold cliffs into the sea. |
b. transf. and fig.
| 1603 Owen Pembrokeshire (1892) 196 The begynning of his Raigne is the Period or farthest Promontorye of the certaine antiquities of this Realme. 1832 W. Irving Alhambra I. xxi. 309 They doubled the promontory of the mountains, and arrived in sight of the famous Puente del Pinos. a 1854 H. Reed Lect. Brit. Poets (1857) II. xv. 205 Standing on the promontory of the present, to feel the air rising from the shadowy waters of the past. 1860 Tyndall Glac. i. ix. 63 The avalanche..was hidden from us by a rocky promontory. |
2. Anat. Applied to certain prominences or protuberances of the body.
promontory of the sacrum, an angular prominence formed by the junction of the last lumbar vertebra with the sacrum. promontory of the tympanum, a protuberance of the inner ear caused by the projection of the cochlea.
| 1831 R. Knox Cloquet's Anat. 111 The sacrum is articulated to the fifth lumbar vertebra... Its junction with the spinal column forms a projecting angle named the Promontory (promontorium). Ibid. 567 The Promontory (Promontorium)..is another pretty broad tubercular eminence, of a variable form, which limits the fenestra ovalis below. 1881 Mivart Cat 298 Another opening, called the fenestra rotunda, lies below and behind the promontory. |
3. attrib. (or adj.) Resembling a promontory, projecting, outstanding.
| 1579 Fenton Guicciard. vii. (1599) 284 On the top of the mountaine called the Promontorie hill. c 1590 Greene Fr. Bacon iv. 6 Welcome..To Englands shore, whose promontory cleeues, Shewes Albion is another little world. 1693 Dryden Juvenal vi. 153 A Promontory Wen, with griesly Grace, Stood high, upon the Handle of his Face. 1726 Pope Odyss. xix. 281 His bending head O'er which a promontory shoulder spread. 1809 Campbell Gertr. Wyom. iii. xxv, Each bold and promontory mound. |