six-story
Meaning
Having six floors or levels.
Structure
Usage
They live in a modern six-story apartment building downtown.
The new library is a six-story structure with a glass facade.
The fire department's ladder can reach the top of a six-story building.
Etymology
The compound 'six-story' is a modern English formation combining a cardinal number with a term for a building's level. 'Six' descends directly from the Old English numeral, tracing back to the Proto-Indo-European root s(w)eks. 'Story', in its architectural sense, has a more circuitous origin, evolving from the Latin 'historia' (narrative, history) through Medieval Latin, where it came to refer to a row of windows with painted stories, and eventually to the floor itself. The logic of the compound is transparently descriptive, literally meaning "having six floors," a straightforward method for specifying a building's vertical scale.
Analysis
- six: From Old English 'siex', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch 'zes' and German 'sechs', from an Indo-European root shared by Latin 'sex' and Greek 'hex'. Functions as a numerical quantifier. - story: From Middle English 'storie', in the sense 'tier of a building', perhaps from Medieval Latin 'historia' in the sense 'picture', because tiers of windows were decorated with painted narratives. Functions as a noun denoting a floor or level of a building.