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Cotton tree is a name given to various tropical trees of the genera Bombax and Ceiba, so called on account of their producing a cottony floss. The Jamaican Cotton tree has a squat trunk and an enormous buttress that enables it to withstand hurricanes and live for hundreds of years. One large Cottontree known as 'Tom Cringle's' and found at Spanish Town in Jamaica was known to be more than 300 years old in 1930.
 Research Cotton Tree
In fortifications a counterfort was a kind of buttress of masonry intended to strengthen a revetment wall.
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In architecture an arcboutant is a flying buttress.
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In architecture, a butment is a buttress of an arch; the supporter, or that part which joins it to the upright pier. The term is also applied to the mass of stone or solid work at the end of a bridge, by which the extreme arches are sustained, or by which the end of a bridge without arches is supported.
Research Butment
In architecture, a buttress is a projecting mass of masonry, used for resisting the outward thrust of an arch, or for ornament and symmetry. When an external projection is used merely to stiffen a wall, it is called a pier, rather than a buttress.
Research Buttress
Finial is a term used in Gothic architecture to describe the ornamental top of a gable, pinnacle, minaret, buttress or spire. The earliest finials, in the later half of the 10th century, were representations of bunches of leaves; but later developments of the same period are marked by greater elaboration.
In scaffolding, a finial is a fitting designed to hold a horizontal tube directly above the vertical tubes so as to form a guard rail or barrier. Finials are available in both fixed, for making right-angled joints and swivelling for producing joints at other angles.
Research Finial
In architecture a flying buttress is a contrivance for taking up the thrust of a roof or vault which can not be supported by ordinary buttresses. It consists of a straight bar of masonry, usually sloping, carried on an arch, and a solid pier or buttress sufficient to receive the thrust. The word is generally applied only to the straight bar with supporting arch.
Research Flying Buttress
In architecture, a hanging-buttress is a buttress supported on a corbel.
Research Hanging-Buttress
In architecture a pinnacle is an architectural member, upright, and generally ending in a small spire. They are used to finish a buttress, to constitute a part in a proportion, as where pinnacles flank a gable or spire, and the like.
Pinnacles may be considered primarily as added weight, where it is necessary to resist the thrust of an arch, etc.
Research Pinnacle
In architecture a skew is a stone at the foot of the slope of a gable, the offset of a buttress, or the like, cut with a sloping surface and with a check to receive the coping stones and retain them in place.
Research Skew
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The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
©1993 - 2009 The Probert Encyclopaedia
Southampton, United Kingdom
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