entasis
See also: éntasis
English
Etymology
Latin entasis, from Ancient Greek ἔντασις (éntasis, “tension, straining”), from ἐντείνω (enteínō, “to stretch or strain tight”).
Pronunciation
Noun
entasis (countable and uncountable, plural entases)
- (architecture) A slight convex curvature introduced into the shaft of a column for aesthetic reasons, or to compensate for the illusion of concavity.
- 1859, Journal of the Society of Arts, Volume 7, page 484,
- 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.
- 1950, William Bell Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece: An Account of Its Historic Development[1], →ISBN, page 168:
- 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.
- 1993, Noel W. Smith, Greek and Interbehavioral Psychology[2], page 125:
- 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.
- 2005, Lothar Haselberger, 4: Bending the Truth: Curvature and Other Refinements of the Parthenon, Jenifer Neils (editor), The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present, page 132,
- 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.
- 1859, Journal of the Society of Arts, Volume 7, page 484,
Translations
slight convex curvature in a column