voussoir

English

Voussoirs forming a stable arch; there are special terms for the voussoirs at the base of the arch and for the (usually single) voussoir at the top centre

Etymology

[1728] Borrowed from French voussoir, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old French vosoir, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Vulgar Latin *volsorium, from *volsus, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin volvō (“I roll”).

Noun

voussoir (plural voussoirs)

1. (architecture) One of a series of wedge-shaped bricks or stones forming an arch or vault.
   • 1977, Jaques Heyman, Equilibrium of Shell Structures, Clarendon Press, Oxford, page 2:

     It is the voussoir depth in a real arch which enables the arch to carry wider ranges of loading; a large number of different idealized centre-line arches can be contained within a given practical profile. ...[T]his must be so, or no mediaeval bridge would have survived its decentering.

Derived terms

• voussoired

Translations

wedge-shaped brick or stone

• Catalan: dovella f
• Finnish: holvikivi
• French: voussoir (fr)
• Galician: doela f
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• German: Keilstein (de) m, Bogenstein m, Bogenstück n, Bogensegment n
• Portuguese: aduela (pt) f
• Spanish: dovela (es) f