Pedestal

How to spell pedestal

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pedestal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pedestal mean?

1. nounA supporting base on which a statue, column, vase, or other object is placed and raised up.
2. nounA position of uncritical admiration or idealisation in which a person is held.

Pedestal in a sentence

• The marble statue rested on a tall granite pedestal in the museum lobby.

• After years of admiring her, he placed his mentor on an impossible pedestal.

• They mounted the trophy on a wooden pedestal at the centre of the table.

• The public put the champion on such a high pedestal that any mistake felt like betrayal.

Where does pedestal come from?

Language of origin: Italian

Pedestal comes from the Italian piedestallo, a compound that literally meant the 'foot of a stall', built from piede meaning 'foot' (the same root as the Latin pes, pedis behind 'pedal' and 'pedestrian') and stallo meaning 'stall' or 'standing place' (a relative of the English word 'stall'). Italian architects of the Renaissance used it for the moulded base on which a column or statue stands. French borrowed it as piédestal, and English took it from there in the middle of the 1500s, gradually simplifying the spelling to the single -stal ending we keep today. The figurative sense, of placing a person 'on a pedestal' to admire them, grew naturally from the literal image of raising a statue above the crowd. The 'ped' for foot is the memory hook: a pedestal is what your statue stands its feet on, and the word ends in a plain -al, not -le.

How the word is built

• pied- (from Italian piede: foot)
• -stal (from stallo: stall, stand)
• -al