aisle
noun
a long, narrow space between rows of seats in an aircraft, cinema, or church: ...
DEFINITION
1. a passage between rows of seats in a building such as a church or theatre, an aircraft, or train:the musical had the audience dancing in the aisles
2. a passage between cabinets and shelves of goods in a supermarket or other building: I spend much of my time at the shops, wandering through the aisles
3. Architecture (in a church) a lower part parallel to the nave, choir, or transept, from which it is divided by pillars: the tiled roof over the south aisle
Aisle Sentence Examples
Aisle of the supermarket that had freezer cabinets on both sides.
The wall of the north aislehas been rebuilt.
The north aisle lies through the arcade; the archway behind is into the northaisle chapel, beside the chancel.
The chancel aisles have four bays, the fourth also belonging to the retrochoir.
Aisle of the church that leads from the back to the altar at the front of the church.
Carpetted central aislewith longitudinal choir stalls on raised planked floors.
Aisle roof was renewed.
There is a fine 15th century brass cross under the high altar and further portions of a brass monument in the nave aisle.
The ten commandments are on the west wall of the north aisle.
Aisle wall just to the west ( see above ).
ETYMOLOGY (Origin)
late 14c., ele, "lateral division of a church (usually separated by a row of pillars),
from Old French ele "wing (of a bird or an army), side of a ship" (12c.,
Modern French aile), from Latin ala, related to axilla "wing, upper arm,
armpit; wing of an army," from PIE *aks- "axis" (see axis), via a
suffixed form *aks-la-. The root meaning in "turning" connects it with
axle and axis.
Confused 15c. with unrelated ile "island" (perhaps from notion of a "detached"
part of a church), and so it took an -s- when isle did, c.1700; by 1750 it
had acquired an a-, on the model of French cognate aile. The word also
was confused with alley, which gave it the sense of "passage between rows
of pews or seats" (1731), which was thence extended to railway cars, theaters,
etc.
Aisles have certain general physical characteristics:
They are virtually always straight, not curved.
They are usually fairly long. An open space that had three rows of chairs to the right of it and three to the left generally would not be considered an "aisle".
Various types of aisles