Crossword clues for pediment
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pediment \Ped"i*ment\, n. [L. pes, pedis, a foot. See Foot.] (Arch.) Originally, in classical architecture, the triangular space forming the gable of a simple roof; hence, a similar form used as a decoration over porticoes, doors, windows, etc.; also, a rounded or broken frontal having a similar position and use. See Temple.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
triangular part of the facade of a Greek-style building, 1660s, alteration of periment, peremint (1590s), of unknown origin, "said to be a workmen's term" [OED]; probably a dialectal garbling of pyramid, the connection perhaps being the triangular shape. Sometimes associated with ped- "foot." Other possibilities include Latin pedamentum "vine-stalk, prop," and Italian pedamento, which at the time this word entered English meant "foundation, basework, footing." Meaning "base, foundation" is from 1726, by inflience of Latin pedem "foot."
Wiktionary
n. (context architecture English) A classical architectural element consisting of a triangular section or gable found above the horizontal superstructure (entablature) which lies immediately upon the columns; fronton.
WordNet
n. a triangular gable between a horizontal entablature and a sloping roof
Wikipedia
A pediment is an element in classical, neoclassical and baroque architecture, and derivatives therefrom, consisting of a gable, originally of a triangular shape, placed above the horizontal structure of the entablature, typically supported by columns. The tympanum, or triangular area within the pediment, was often decorated with relief sculpture depicting scenes from Greek and Roman mythology or allegorical figures.
A pediment is a very gently sloping (.5°-7°) inclined bedrock surface. It typically slopes down from the base of a steeper retreating desert cliff, or escarpment, but may continue to exist after the mountain has eroded away. It is caused by erosion. It develops when sheets of running water ( laminar sheet flows) wash over it in intense rainfall events. It may be thinly covered with fluvial gravel that has washed over it from the foot of mountains produced by cliff retreat erosion. It is typically a concave surface gently sloping away from mountainous desert areas.
It is not to be confused with merged groups of alluvial fans ( bajadas), which also may appear to gently slope from an escarpment, but are composed of material eroded from canyons, not bedrock.
Three formational zones are recognized for pediments:
- An inner most zone of mountainous uplands that have near vertical erosion
- An intermediate zone or degradation zone which is the pediment beyond the mountain front.
- An outer zone or aggradation zone which extends beyond the pediment and is a zone of deposition.
Coalescence of pediments over a large area results in a pediplain.
Usage examples of "pediment".
The pediment field from its architectonic conditions was never suited to decoration in relief.
She looked around at the wreckage, remembering the vast, beautifully proportioned building on its high podium of many steps, the Ionic columns all bravely painted and gilded, the metopes and pediment veritable masterpieces.
It is very noticeable that these reliefs, unlike the others which in general furnish the closest analogies, the metopes of the temple at Selinous and the pediment of the Megarian Treasury at Olympia, have the ground unpainted.
If then there are reasons for finding the origin of pedimental decoration in a plane or low-relief composition of terracotta, made more effective both by a framing of like material and technic, and by the acroteria at either extremity and above, then the process of development which leads at length to the pediments at Aegina and the Parthenon becomes at once easy and natural.
An unhappy combination which wouldat least from the front aspect of the Sacra Viabe vastly improved by the addition of a proper and imposing temple portico and pediment.
The night wind licked over us and London shimmered and yellowed as he showed me the verdigrised copperplate engravings which were bolted to each side of the four compass-facing pediments.
It is a god, a secondary god manifesting before there is any vision of that other, the Supreme which rests over all, enthroned in transcendence upon that splendid pediment, the Nature following close upon it.
And when the good fathers had reached the appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed fo the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed that God might bless that house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to inhabit therein.
The fugitive was sitting on the pediment on the further side of the tomb, facing a crowd of leaping lions and prancing unicorns, vaulting hippogriffs and rearing cobras, all of them hewn in living wood befieadi a roof of rainbows.
The fugitive was sitting on the pediment on the further side of the tomb, facing a crowd of leaping lions and prancing unicorns, vaulting hippogriffs and rearing cobras, all of them hewn in living wood beneath a roof of rainbows.
The effect was one of stark simplicity, broken only by the frieze running along the pediment: skulls in low relief, presenting their left profiles.
There were watchtowers and balconies, columned belvederes and pediments.
Dormer windows were cut in this roof, with casings and pediments which the chisel of some great artist had covered with arabesques and dentils.
The Sandwall conceals the First Circinate, which provides a pediment to the Second.
He showed us a delicate aedicula with two columns of lapis lazuli and gold which framed an Entombment of Christ in fine silver bas-relief surmounted by a golden cross set with thirteen diamonds against a background of grainy onyx, while the little pediment was scalloped with agate and rubies.