Find the word definition

The Collaborative International Dictionary
Traceries

Tracery \Tra"cer/y\, n.; pl. Traceries (Arch.)

  1. Ornamental work with rambled lines. Especially:

    1. The decorative head of a Gothic window.

      Note: Window tracery is of two sorts, plate tracery and bar tracery. Plate tracery, common in Italy, consists of a series of ornamental patterns cut through a flat plate of stone. Bar tracery is a decorative pattern formed by the curves and intersections of the molded bars of the mullions. Window tracery is imitated in many decorative objects, as panels of wood or metal either pierced or in relief. See also Stump tracery under Stump, and Fan tracery under Fan.

    2. A similar decoration in some styles of vaulting, the ribs of the vault giving off the minor bars of which the tracery is composed.

  2. 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. ``Knit with curious tracery.''
    --Burns.

Wiktionary
traceries

n. (plural of tracery English)

Usage examples of "traceries".

I twisted away from the traceries of fire, using the Mongol for cover, and shot a palm heel into his contorted face.

As he rode, the rain fell faster, making his cloak sodden, and the night closed in rapidly until all that could be seen was the solid wall of blackness broken only by the silver traceries of rain.

His ears became confounded, the traceries of red, gold, and silver confused his eyes.

The air above them was black with fighting birds and machines, red traceries of fire crisscrossing the sky, pieces of metal and bloody feathers falling all around them.

One adorned with lacelike traceries, black against the nacreous glow shining through the plastic membrane.

Stair-ramps threaded between the Decks like hundred-yard-long traceries of spider-webs, and the elevator shafts were vertical pillars which pierced the levels, apparently supporting the metal sky.

Through the screen of alder and grape and willow and virgin's-bower the sunlight fell, as through the delicate traceries of a cathedral window.

He simply stood for a few minutes under the gray-trunked alders that were so marked by the loving hands of long ago men and maidens—beside the mint bordered spring with the scattered stones of that old foundation—where, through the screen of boughs and vines and virgin's-bower the sunlight fell as through the traceries of a cathedral window, and the low, deep tones of the mountain waters came like the music of a great organ.