monolithic
/mɒnəˈlɪθɪk
/adjective
1Formed of a single large block of stone: later Byzantine columns were monolithic and usually made of marble...
- This section was conceived as having been carved out of a single monolithic block.
- The war memorial, an exquisite monolithic stone pillar, was erected at this place in memory of the soldiers from the erstwhile Mysore state who laid down their lives in the war.
- Without warning the monolithic stone outcropping blew into a thousand fragments of flying rock.
1.1(Of a building) very large and characterless: IPC moved the paper from Covent Garden to the monolithic King’s Reach Tower...
- Enormous monolithic buildings, windowless and scaleless, were separated by vast boulevards.
- The new galleries and studios are not Old-World museums which can be described as architectural wonders, or as monolithic buildings that have a story behind them.
- On thing which particularly fascinates me is how the large and monolithic buildings and other structures of the industrial age can be regenerated to form a part of modern cities.
Synonyms
massive, huge, vast, colossal, gigantic, immense, giant, enormous, mammoth, monumental;
featureless, characterless, faceless
2(Of an organization or system) large, powerful, indivisible, and slow to change: rejecting any move towards a monolithic European superstate...
- Workfare regimes are not monolithic systems, but dynamic configurations of restless reform, technocratic emulation, and tangled scalar relations.
- It is no longer the monolithic system based on large capital investment exemplified at its best by Hollywood in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
- The French army was not a monolithic organization.
Synonyms
inflexible, rigid, unbending, unchanging, intractable, immovable, impenetrable, fossilized, hidebound;
undifferentiated, uniform, unitary
3 Electronics (Of a solid-state circuit) composed of active and passive components formed in a single chip: a video converter on a single monolithic chip...
- The motion is sensed by an accelerometer disposed within the device that is formed of a monolithic integrated circuit chip.
- Its application to electronics collected a number of well-known technologies to produce useful monolithic circuits.
- His invention of the monolithic integrated circuit, the microchip, some 45 years ago laid the conceptual and technical foundation for the entire field of modern micro-electronics.
