the inside surface of the top of a room, the part you see when you look straight up
The paint on the ceiling is starting to peel.
Tom lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling until he fell asleep.
✦ From Old French ceil, ciel (“sky, canopy”), later influenced by Latin caelum (“sky”). The meaning shifted from “sky” to “top interior surface” in the 14th century.
a maximum limit that something is allowed to reach
The government introduced a price ceiling on basic food items.
Our budget ceiling for the project is ten thousand dollars.
the highest height at which an aircraft can fly safely, or the height of the lowest cloud layer covering most of the sky
The fighter jet has a service ceiling of 15,000 metres.
Low clouds reduced the cloud ceiling to just 500 metres today.
