Cherub

1. n. A beautiful child; — so called because artists have represented cherubs as beautiful children.
2. n. A mysterious composite being, the winged footstool and chariot of the Almighty, described in Ezekiel i. and x.
3. n. A symbolical winged figure of unknown form used in connection with the mercy seat of the Jewish Ark and Temple.
4. n. One of a order of angels, variously represented in art. In European painting the cherubim have been shown as blue, to denote knowledge, as distinguished from the seraphim (see Seraph), and in later art the children’s heads with wings are generally called cherubs.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.