dais

noun

da·​is ˈdā-əs 

nonstandard

ˈdī- 

: a raised platform (as in a hall or large room)

Mounting the dais which had been set up for his use, he swirled the sinister cloak about him and sat down in the Abbot's chair.

—Brian Jacques

Synonyms

• platform
• podium
• rostrum
• stage
• stand
• tribune

Examples of dais in a Sentence

the speaker took his place at the front of the dais

Recent Examples on the Web

And there was attention paid during the speeches both to the improbable fact that an offshoot of the group, Dead & Company, is still out there playing, 60 years after the original group’s formation, even as Weir acknowledged absences at the dais. —Chris Willman, Variety, 1 Feb. 2025

After an executive session lasting nearly an hour and a half, all board members but Smith returned to the dais. —Cody Copeland, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 31 Jan. 2025

Related Articles Actress Isabelle Huppert joined Dati on a dais to recount the designer’s accomplishments as his parents, key journalists, his favorite fashion professor and Kering executives looked on. —Miles Socha, WWD, 28 Jan. 2025

In suits and ties on the dais behind President Donald Trump during his inauguration speech Monday — inches from the President’s family — sat Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. —Ethan Baron, The Mercury News, 22 Jan. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Middle English deis, des "high table, elevated platform occupied by a court or council," borrowed from Anglo-French deis, dais (continental Old French deis "table of honor set up on a platform"), going back to Medieval Latin discus "raised table, platform," going back to Latin, "discus, kind of plate, gong," borrowed from Greek dískos "discus," in Late Greek also "dish, round mirror, the sun's disk, gong" — more at discus

Note: See note at dish entry 1. The predominant form in Middle French is dois, which should have resulted in Modern French [dwa]; the reason for the outcome dais [dɛ], with the presumed shift [dwɛ] to [dɛ], is in this, as in a number of parallel cases, unclear. As pointed out by the Oxford English Dictionary, first edition, the English word was, excepting Scots, out of use by 1600; the current word is an antiquarian revival, with the spelling presumably copying modern French.

First Known Use

13th century, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for dais

• ablaze
• airways
• allays
• always
• amaze
• anglaise
• appraise
• archways
• arrays
• ashtrays
• assays
• ballets

Kids Definition

dais

noun

da·​is ˈdā-əs 

: a raised platform (as in a large room)