canopy.
1. Roof-like ornamented hood surmounting an altar, doorway, font, niche, pulpit (where it is called a tester), stall, statue, tabernacle, throne, tomb, window-aperture, etc., supported on brackets, colonnettes, etc., or suspended.

2. Canopy of honour, ceele, ceilure, celure, cellure, or seele, is a richly coloured, often gilded, and panelled ceiling above an altar, chancel, chantry-chapel, mortuary-chapel, etc.

3. Town canopy is a structure resembling an arcaded gabled opening, often with elaborate pinnacles, finials, etc., like a model building, set on top of a niche or protecting a statue: the motif was adapted in funerary architecture, often shown in three dimensions, but horizontal (90° from the usual vertical position as a protection from the weather), on tomb-chests over the heads of effigies, and was later shown in incised slabs and funerary brasses. A canopy over an altar is usually called baldacchino or ciborium.

can·o·py / ˈkanəpē/ • n. (pl. -pies) an ornamental cloth covering hung or held up over something, esp. a throne or bed. ∎ fig. something hanging or perceived as hanging over a person or scene: the canopy of stars. ∎  Archit. a rooflike projection or shelter: they mounted the steps under the concrete canopy. ∎  the transparent plastic or glass cover of an aircraft's cockpit. ∎  the expanding, umbrellalike part of a parachute, made of silk or nylon. ∎  [in sing.] the uppermost trees or branches of the trees in a forest, forming a more or less continuous layer of foliage.• v. (-pies, -pied) [tr.] [usu. as adj.] (canopied) cover or provide with a canopy: a canopied bed | the river was canopied by overhanging trees. ORIGIN: late Middle English: from medieval Latin canopeum ‘ceremonial canopy,’ alteration of Latin conopeum ‘mosquito net over a bed,’ from Greek kōnōpeion ‘couch with mosquito curtains,’ from kōnōps ‘mosquito.’

canopy (ecol.) The part of a woodland or forest community that is formed by the trees. In complex forests, e.g. in tropical rain forest, the canopy is often arbitrarily subdivided into emergent, middle, and lower zones. The term may also be applied to the upper layer of shrub and scrub communities, or in any terrestrial plant community in which a distinctive habitat is formed in the upper, denser regions of the taller plants. Compare GROUND LAYER.

canopy The part of a woodland or forest community that is formed by the trees. In complex forests, e.g. in tropical rain forest, the canopy is often arbitrarily subdivided into emergent, middle, and lower zones. The term may also be applied to the upper layer of shrub and scrub communities, or any terrestrial plant community in which a distinctive habitat is formed in the upper, denser regions of the taller plants. Compare ground layer.

canopy XIV. Late ME. canope, canape — medL. canopeum, for L. cōnōpēum net over a bed — Gr. kōnōpeîon Egyptian bed with mosquito curtains, f. kṓnōps gnat, mosquito.