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

Unadapted borrowing from French voussoir, from Old French vosoir, from Vulgar Latin *volsorium, from *volsus, from Latin volvō (“I roll”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /vuˈswɑːr/

Noun

voussoir (plural voussoirs)

1. (architecture) One of a series of wedge-shaped bricks or stones forming an arch or vault. [from 1728]
   • 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.

   • 2020 May 20, Philip Haigh, “Ribblehead: at the heart of the S&C's survival and its revival: Ribblehead Viaduct repairs”, in Rail, page 26:

     Other areas have mortar joints missing, including between the voussoir blocks forming the edge of the arches on either side of the pier.

Derived terms

• voussoired

Translations

wedge-shaped brick or stone

• Bulgarian: клиновиден камък m (klinoviden kamǎk)
• Catalan: dovella f
• Finnish: holvikivi
• French: voussoir (fr)
• Galician: doela (gl) f
• German: Keilstein (de) m, Bogenstein m, Bogenstück n, Bogensegment n
• Polish: kliniec m
• Portuguese: aduela (pt) f
• Spanish: dovela (es) f

Further reading

• voussoir on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

Inherited from Old French vosoir, from Vulgar Latin *volsorium, from *volsus, from Latin volvō (“to roll”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /vu.swaʁ/

Noun

voussoir m (plural voussoirs)

1. (architecture) voussoir

Further reading

• “voussoir”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.