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tracery love

tracery

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Ornamental work of interlaced and branching lines, especially the lacy openwork in a Gothic window.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In architecture, permanent openwork built in a window, or an opening of similar character, in the form of mullions, which are usually so treated as to be ornamental, and, especially in medieval architecture, form in the head of the window arches and foliated curves, and later flowing lines, intersecting and enriched in various ways.
  • noun In decorative art, scrollwork or foliated ornament having no strong resemblance to nature; a term used loosely, and applied to work of many materials.
  • noun In lace-making, a pattern or added decoration, in general produced by raised ridges or bars: it is peculiar to pillowlace or bobbin-lace.
  • noun Any sculpture or ornamentation suggesting architectural tracery: as, the delicate tracery of an insect's wings. See sculpture, 4.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Arch.) Ornamental work with rambled lines.
  • noun The decorative head of a Gothic window.
  • noun A similar decoration in some styles of vaulting, the ribs of the vault giving off the minor bars of which the tracery is composed.
  • noun A tracing of lines; a system of lines produced by, or as if by, tracing, esp. when interweaving or branching out in ornamental or graceful figures.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun architecture bars or ribs, usually of stone or wood, or other material, that subdivide an opening or stand in relief against a door or wall as an ornamental feature.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun decoration consisting of an open pattern of interlacing ribs

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From trace.]

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Examples

  • Those scars had long ago become a part of her, a thin tracery of lines that spoke of a history, a past.

    Excerpt - Bonds of Justice Nalini Singh 2009

  • Those scars had long ago become a part of her, a thin tracery of lines that spoke of a history, a past.

    Archive 2009-11-01 Nalini Singh 2009

  • In the tracery are the evangelistic symbols and the four fathers of the Latin church -- St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and St. Gregory; and in the window which divides the chantry from the Ante-chapel is to be seen the Annunciation, with, on the one side, St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, and St. Christopher with the infant Jesus; on the other, St. Anne with the

    A Short Account of King's College Chapel Walter Poole Littlechild

  • Between this rib and the tracery is another rib springing on the north side from a bunch of foliage and on the south from a grotesque corbel.

    Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

  • Above these windows is a large rose window of "plate tracery" -- tracery, that is to say, in its earlier form, in which the openings for the glass appear to have been cut out of the stone rather than the stone to have been added as a frame for the glass.

    The Cathedral Church of York Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Archi-Episcopal See 1896

  • Those same lips that had been so insistent a few moments earlier were now like gossamer wings, making a kind of tracery over her smooth skin.

    Give Us Forever Peale, Constance F. 1982

  • The tracery of this window is in good preservation, and is one of the most favourable examples of a kind of tracery developed in Scotland during the fifteenth century.

    Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys Herbert Story

  • There, a sense of openness and light prevails, as towering French doors pierce the pale stone walls so that the intervening pilasters appear like delicate tracery between the broad expanses of glass.

    Beware of Catching the King's Eye Jonathan Lopez 2011

  • And should the roll of the “faithful” increase or diminish; should her fortunes ebb or flow; should the warm tracery of sunlight caress her face, or the cold darkness of night press her sore, He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

    Archive 2009-07-01 2009

  • And should the roll of the “faithful” increase or diminish; should her fortunes ebb or flow; should the warm tracery of sunlight caress her face, or the cold darkness of night press her sore, He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

    Now That's Steamy 2009

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