What is "pedestal"

Pedestal \Ped"es*tal\, n. [Sp. pedestal; cf. F. pi['e]destal, It. piedestallo; fr. L. es, pedis, foot + OHG. stal standing place, station, place, akin to E. stall. See Foot, and Stall, and Footstall.]

1. (Arch.) The base or foot of a column, statue, vase, lamp, or the like; the part on which an upright work stands. It consists of three parts, the base, the die or dado, and the cornice or surbase molding. See Illust. of Column.

   Build him a pedestal, and say, ``Stand there!''
   --Cowper.

2. 1. (Railroad Cars) A casting secured to the frame of a truck and forming a jaw for holding a journal box.

   2. (Mach.) A pillow block; a low housing.

   3. (Bridge Building) An iron socket, or support, for the foot of a brace at the end of a truss where it rests on a pier.

      Pedestal coil (steam Heating), a group of connected straight pipes arranged side by side and one above another, -- used in a radiator.

1560s, "base supporting a column, statue, etc.," from Middle French piédestal (1540s), from Italian piedistallo "base of a pillar," from pie "foot" + di "of" + stallo "stall, place, seat," from a Germanic source (see stall (n.1)).\n

\nSpelling in English influenced by Latin pedem "foot." An Old English word for it was fotstan, literally "foot-stone." Figurative sense of put (someone) on a pedestal "regard as highly admirable" is attested from 1859.

n. (context architecture English) The base or foot of a column, statue, vase, lamp vb. To set or support on (or as if on) a pedestal.

1. n. a support or foundation; "the base of the lamp" [syn: base, stand]

2. a position of great esteem (and supposed superiority); "they put him on a pedestal"

3. an architectural support or base (as for a column or statue) [syn: plinth, footstall]

__NOTOC__ A pedestal (from French piédestal, Italian piedistallo, "foot of a stall") or plinth is the support of a statue or a vase.

Although in Syria, Asia Minor and Tunisia the Romans occasionally raised the columns of their temples or propylaea on square pedestals, in Rome itself they were employed only to give greater importance to isolated columns, such as those of Trajan and Antoninus, or as a podium to the columns employed decoratively in the Roman triumphal arches.

The architects of the Italian revival, however, conceived the idea that no order was complete without a pedestal, and as the orders were by them employed to divide up and decorate a building in several stories, the cornice of the pedestal was carried through and formed the sills of their windows, or, in open arcades, round a court, the balustrade of the arcade. They also would seem to have considered that the height of the pedestal should correspond in its proportion with that of the column or pilaster it supported; thus in the church of Saint John Lateran, where the applied order is of considerable dimensions, the pedestal is high instead of the ordinary height of 3 to .

In the imperial China, a stone tortoise called bixi was traditionally used as the pedestal for important stele, especially those associated with emperors. According to the 1396 version of the regulations issued by the Ming Dynasty founder, the Hongwu Emperor, the highest nobility (those of the gong and hou ranks) and the officials of the top 3 ranks were eligible for bixi-based funerary tablets, while lower-level mandarins' steles were to stand on simple rectangular pedestals.

Pedestal may refer to:

• Pedestal, support or stand for a statue or other object
  • Pedestal crater
  • Pedestal desk
  • Pedestal table, a table with a single central leg
• Pedestal (song), 2006 song by Fergie
• "Pedestal", song by Portishead from their 1994 album Dummy
• "The Pedestal", a poem by Patti Smith from her 1996 book The Coral Sea
• Operation Pedestal, British operation to get vital supplies to the island of Malta in August 1942 during World War II
• Term used in electronic measurement for the measured value when no input signal is given.