edifice
/ˈɛdɪfɪs
/noun formal
1A large, imposing building.Residential buildings and public edifices were built on a far larger scale than in previous years....
- Forget your monuments, buildings and other such edifices, this city has trees.
- It is an imposing edifice, a mock temple based on the classical Greek model, with a fine pediment and no fewer than six columns.
Synonyms
building, structure, construction, erection, pile, complex, assembly;
property, development, premises, establishment, place
2A complex system of beliefs: the concepts on which the edifice of capitalism was built...
- Among the core fantasies on which the entire edifice rests is the belief that something called True Love exists.
- Poverty and wars are becoming the order of the world threatening to demolish the very edifice patriarchal capitalism strives to protect.
- All societies have moral rules, but only a few have elaborated them into systems - into what might be called moral edifices.
Origin
Late Middle English: via Old French from Latin aedificium, from aedis 'dwelling' + facere 'make'.