Trending: ‘monolith’

Lookups for monolith spiked on November 24, 2020, following a startling discovery in the Utah desert.

Authorities conducting a routine survey of the population of bighorn sheep for the state wildlife agency found something very un-sheeplike instead: a free-standing column, ten to twelve feet tall, apparently made of stainless steel, embedded into the rock. The three-faced structure seemed to point at a narrow canyon formed in the red rock of the desert.

The pilot of the surveyor's helicopter that first spotted the structure said: "I’m assuming it is, you know, some new wave artist or something, or somebody that was just a big 2001: A Space Odyssey fan."

The structure was referred to in news reports as a monolith.

Monolith is defined as "a single great stone often in the form of an obelisk or column" or, more broadly, "a massive structure."

Monolith is a word that existed in French, Latin, and Greek before it came to English. It is made up of the Greek words mon- ("alone") and lithos ("stone").

Although etymologically a monolith is a stone structure, it's clear that in art criticism and general usage the word can also refer to those made from other materials, such as stainless steel (or perhaps a solid and shiny substance delivered by aliens).

There are caryatides statues; but instead of monolithes they are regular layers of freestone, similar to the columns they are attached to.
— The Literary Gazette, London, 5 October 1822

3rdly, A Monolith, six feet high; it represents Ramses the Great (Serostris), seated upon a throne between Amon-Ra and Neith, of rose granite, and is a perfect work.
— Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh, 1 November 1824