stele

noun4

1. •
   An upright (or formerly upright) slab containing engraved or painted decorations or inscriptions; a stela.

   • A superior class of members...had their names inscribed upon a marble stele or column. — 1820
2. •
   Any carved or engraved surface.

   • Two large hieroglyphed steles incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff. — 1877
3. •
   The central core of a plant's root and stem system, especially including the vascular tissue and developed from the plerome.

   • The stele may have—in different structures—one to many protoxylem (primitive wood) groups, and is accordingly described as monarch...diarch...triarch...tetrarch...polyarch. — 1895
4. •
   (no longer used) An acroterion, the decoration on the ridge of an ancient Greek building such as a temple.

   • Stele. The ornaments on the ridge of a Greek temple, answering to the antefixae on the summit of the flank entablatures, are thus designated. — 1840