Entasis

Quick meaning: Entasis is a noun meaning (architecture) A slight convex curvature introduced into the shaft of a column for aesthetic reasons, or to compensate for the illusion of concavity.

Meaning

(architecture) A slight convex curvature introduced into the shaft of a column for aesthetic reasons, or to compensate for the illusion of concavity.

Example Sentences

The entasis varies in different temples and is not found in some, as, for instance, the temple of Athena Nike and in the east portico of the Erechtheum.

Entasis occurred a thousand years earlier in the Sarsen stones at Stonehenge in southern England.[…]Entasis is also present in Egyptian obelisks and in the vertical fins of the radiator grill of the Rolls-Royce automobile.

Counter to the increased entases of the pronaos and opisthodomos columns, the adjacent anta pillars and longitudinal cella walls received extraordinarily decreased entases that almost, or even fully, reached rectilinearity.

It was simply the curve of the entasis, approximating infinitely near to a catenary or to a very flat hyperbola. He could not definitely say whether it was one or the other, but it was nearer to these curves than to the old-fashioned straight line.

Word Forms

• entases

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include verge, apophyge, concavation, camber, curvative, incavity.

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