Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A piece of stone, wood, brick, or other building material, projecting from the face of a wall and generally used to support a cornice or arch.
- transitive verb To provide with or support by a corbel or corbels.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To support on corbels.
- In architecture, to expand by extending each member of a series beyond the one below.
- noun A raven or crow; a corbie.
- noun In architecture, a piece of stone, wood, or iron projecting from the vertical face of a wall to support some superincumbent object.
- noun The vase or drum of the Corinthian column: so called from its resemblance to a basket.
- noun In entomology, the truncated oval tip of the tibia, when, as in many Rhynchophera, the insertion of the tarsus is a little above the tip on the inner side.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Arch.) A bracket supporting a superincumbent object, or receiving the spring of an arch. Corbels were employed largely in Gothic architecture.
- transitive verb To furnish with a corbel or corbels; to support by a corbel; to make in the form of a corbel.
- transitive verb to furnish with a corbel of courses, each projecting beyond the one next below it.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun architecture A structural member
jutting out of a wall to carry asuperincumbent weight. - verb transitive To furnish with a corbel or corbels; to support by a corbel; to make in the form of a corbel.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (architecture) a triangular bracket of brick or stone (usually of slight extent)
- verb furnish with a corbel
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The building dates back to the 16th century, but the object - known as a corbel - is believed to be from the late-13th to mid-14th century.
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A corbel is a stone bracket that projects from a wall or corner, either to support a beam or for decoration.
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On these rested painted wooden sun-filtering shutters attached to a concrete corbel, which is in turn connected to the ring-beam.
Chapter 7 1995
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A band of treble billet moulding runs under the lower windows; a double hatched moulding under the second tier; and immediately below the parapet is the ornament called the corbel table; these with the billet moulding round the clerestory windows, are in excellent preservation.
Ely Cathedral Anonymous
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Will any of your correspondents be so kind as to inform me if the device on the corbel was the badge of the knights of the order of St. John of
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The roof-shaft west of this bay, for some unknown reason, ends considerably short of the roof in a kind of corbel with rude foliage upon it.
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
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I also was astonished by how different the aesthetic system wasthe vertiginous staircases, the corbel arches, the huge reliefs, etc.
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There is also a corbel-arched tunnel that goes straight through to what may have been a secret exit.
Day Four: Hattushas Walter Jon Williams 2009
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There is also a corbel-arched tunnel that goes straight through to what may have been a secret exit.
Archive 2009-05-01 Walter Jon Williams 2009
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I forgot to mention this on a corbel in the foyer.
Welcome to The Glad Hand Café. Ann Althouse 2009
reesetee commented on the word corbel
A bracket of stone, wood, brick, or other building material that projects from the face of a wall and is generally used to support a cornice or arch
February 23, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word corbel
"Projecting stone (or timber) feature on a wall to support an overhanging parapet, platform, turret, etc." (similar to definition listed, but different enough to add)
August 24, 2008
mollusque commented on the word corbel
Citation at retrograde amnesia.
November 7, 2008