Etymology : Middle English voute, from Middle French, from Vulgar Latin volvita turn, vault, from feminine of volvitus, alteration of Latin volutus, past participle of volvere to roll; more at VOLUBLE
Pronunciation : 'volt
Function : noun
Date : 14th century
1. arch, dome; room with an arch or a dome; secure room for storing money or valuables; underground burial chamber; pole vaulting. leap up or over (especially with the help of the hands or a vaulting pole); rising up suddenly (as to fame or success); create a vaulted structure; be in the form of a vaulted structure. vault\vault\, v. i. [cf. of. volter, f. voltiger, it. volt re turn. see:
vault, n., 4.].
2. to leap; to bound; to jump; to spring. vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself. leaning on his lance, he vaulted on a tree. lucan vaulted upon pegasus with all the heat and intrepidity of youth.
3. to exhibit feats of tumbling or leaping; to tumble.vault \vault\ (v&add;lt; see:
note, below), n. [oe. voute, of. voute, volte, f. voûte, ll. volta, for voluta, volutio, fr. l. volvere, volutum, to roll, to turn about. see:
voluble, and cf. vault a leap, volt a turn, volute.].
4. (arch.) an arched structure of masonry, forming a ceiling or canopy. the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault.
5. an arched apartment; especially, a subterranean room, use for storing articles, for a prison, for interment, or the like; a cell; a cellar. "charnel vaults." the silent vaults of death. to banish rats that haunt our vault.
6. the canopy of heaven; the sky. that heaven's vault should crack.
7. [f. volte, it. volta, originally, a turn, and the same word as volta an arch. see:
the etymology above.] a leap or bound. specifically: (a) (man.) the bound or leap of a horse; a curvet. (b) a leap by aid of the hands, or of a pole, springboard, or the like.note: the l in this word was formerly often suppressed in pronunciation.
8. An arched structure of masonry, forming a ceiling or canopy.
9. An arched apartment; especially, a subterranean room, use for storing articles, for a prison, for interment, or the like; a cell; a cellar.
10. The canopy of heaven; the sky.
11. A leap or bound.
12. The bound or leap of a horse; a curvet.
13. A leap by aid of the hands, or of a pole, springboard, or the like.
14. To form with a vault, or to cover with a vault; to give the shape of an arch to; to arch; as, vault a roof; to vault a passage to a court.
15. To leap over; esp., to leap over by aid of the hands or a pole; as, to vault a fence.
16. To leap; to bound; to jump; to spring.
17. To exhibit feats of tumbling or leaping; to tumble. the act of jumping over an obstacle an arched brick or stone ceiling or roof a burial chamber a strongroom or compartment for safekeeping of valuables bound vigorously jump across or leap over.
18. 1. A vault is a secure room where money and other valuable things can be kept safely. Most of the money was in storage in bank vaults.
19. A vault is a room underneath a church or in a cemetery where people are buried, usually the members of a single family. He ordered that Matilda's body should be buried in the family vault. = tomb.
20. A vault is an arched roof or ceiling. the vault of a great cathedral.
21. If you vault something or vault over it, you jump quickly onto or over it, especially by putting a hand on top of it to help you balance while you jump. He could easily vault the wall Ned vaulted over a fallen tree. In building construction, an arched structure forming a ceiling or roof. The masonry vault exerts the same kind of thrust as the arch, and must be supported along its entire length by heavy walls with limited openings. The basic barrel vault, in effect a continuous series of arches, first appeared in ancient Egypt and the Middle East. Roman architects discovered that two barrel vaults intersecting at right angles (a groin vault) could, when repeated in series, span rectangular areas of unlimited length. Because the groin vault's thrusts are concentrated at the four corners, its supporting walls need not be massive. Medieval European builders developed the rib vault, a skeleton of arches or ribs on which the masonry could be laid. The fan vault, popular in the English Perpendicular style, used fan-shaped clusters of tracery-like ribs springing from pendants or columns. The 19th century saw the use of large iron skeletons as frameworks for vaults of lightweight materials (see:
Crystal Palace). An important modern innovation is the reinforced-concrete shell vault, which, if its length is three or more times its transverse section, behaves as a deep beam and exerts no lateral thrust.