the.com/skyline
a city's ego drawn in glass and steel against the dusk
means The outline of buildings, hills, or other structures seen against the sky, especially the distinctive profile of a city's tall buildings on the horizon.
from A transparent compound of 'sky' and 'line,' English to its bones. 'Sky' comes from Old Norse 'ský,' meaning 'cloud' — the Vikings gave English the very word for the heavens. 'Line' traces back through Old English to Latin 'linea,' a string or thread of flax. The word first meant simply the line where earth or sea meets sky — the horizon — and only later, as cities grew tall enough to scrawl their own jagged edge across that horizon, did 'skyline' come to mean the silhouette of a metropolis.
- word origin
- Originally meant the natural horizon, not buildings
- first famous use
- New York popularized skyline as a cityscape in 1890s
- protected by law
- London legally guards sightlines to St Paul's dome
- always changing
- No skyline photo stays accurate for very long
manhattan skyline — new york city's iconic cluster of skyscrapers including the empire state building and one world trade center
chicago skyline — features the willis tower (formerly sears tower) and spans 26 miles along lake michigan
hong kong skyline — victoria harbour's dramatic backdrop with over 2,000 skyscrapers, densest vertical cityscape globally
dubai skyline — dominated by the burj khalifa (828m, world's tallest building since 2010) and palm jumeirah