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Plinth   Listen
noun
Plinth  n.  (Arch.) In classical architecture, a vertically faced member immediately below the circular base of a column; also, the lowest member of a pedestal; hence, in general, the lowest member of a base; a sub-base; a block upon which the moldings of an architrave or trim are stopped at the bottom.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plinth" Quotes from Famous Books



... reading the inscription, in black letters, on the golden plinth: "Presented to Thomas Smythe-Caulfield, Esqr., M.P., by the Council and Teachers of St. Paul's Schools, ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... kind had gone to pieces, but some of the larger lead types and quads still were recognizable. And, the crucial thing, he turned up a jagged bit of stereotype-sheet from under the protection of a concrete plinth that had fallen ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... are cleaner than might be supposed after taking into consideration the dirtiness of the clothes and persons of those who inhabit them. They are as a rule substantial thatched cottages with plank or stone walls, and raised on a plinth some 2 to 3 ft. from the ground. The only window is a small opening on one side of the house, which admits but a dim light into the smoke-begrimed interior. The beams are so low that it is impossible for a person ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... are bent to steady our column of civilized humanity by a combination of props and jugglers' arts, but a justice coming of the recognized needs of majorities, which will base the column on a broad plinth for safety-broad as the base of yonder mountain's towering white immensity—and will be the guarantee for the solid uplifting of our civilization at last. 'Right, thou!' he apostrophized—the old Ironer, at a point of his meditation. 'And right, thou! more largely right!' he thought, further ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... is one of the eternal mysteries of Italian art. What can have been Donatello's intention? Why give such prominence to this graceless type? Baldinucci called it St. Mark.[21] Others have been misled by the lettering on the plinth below the statue "David Rex": beneath the Jeremiah is "Salomon Rex."[22] These inscriptions belonged, of course, to the kings which made way for Donatello's prophets. The Zuccone must belong to the series of prophets; it is fruitless ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... very instant. The Secretariats know them only by name; they are not the picked men of the Districts with Divisions and Collectorates awaiting them. They are simply the rank and file the food for fever sharing with the ryot and the plough-bullock the honour of being the plinth on which the State rests. The older ones have lost their aspirations; the younger are putting theirs aside with a sigh. Both learn to endure patiently until the end of the day. Twelve years in the rank and file, men say, will sap the hearts of the bravest ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling

... clouded with flour as with stale hoar- frost; the meal lodged in the corners of the window-sills, forming a soil in which lichens grew without ever getting any bigger, as they had done since his smallest infancy; the mosses on the plinth towards the river, reaching as high as the capillary power of the walls would fetch up moisture for their nourishment, and the penned mill-pond, now as ever on the point of overflowing into the garden. Everything ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... turret of two stories, that rises some twenty-nine feet above the roof. The other angles terminate in three rectangular turrets about fourteen feet square, and twenty-seven feet high above the roof. The walls are at the base some fifteen feet in thickness, exclusive of the steep battering plinth from which they rise, and which slopes sharply outwards. They diminish by set-offs at each floor. The interior is divided into two unequally sized chambers by a cross-wall ten feet in thickness, running from north to south. Of these, the eastern one is again ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... mountain that the temptation of it is as great to me to-day as it was on the first day I saw it, when I was feeling my way down the West Coast of Africa on the S.S. Lagos in 1893, and it revealed itself by good chance from its surf-washed plinth to its skyscraping summit. Certainly it is most striking when you see it first, as I first saw it, after coasting for weeks along the low shores and mangrove-fringed rivers of the Niger Delta. Suddenly, right up out of the sea, rises the great mountain to its 13,760 ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... when, about four hours after, his mother looked in at the window to see what Pollux was doing, whether her little stratagem had succeeded, she cried out with surprise, for the favorite's bust, a likeness in every feature, stood on a plinth side by side with the original sketch. Before she could cross the threshold her son had run to meet her, lifted her in his arms, and kissing her forehead and lips he exclaimed, radiant ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... time, if one did not allow one's self to be alarmed by a daubing of canary yellow, with a dado of chocolate which clothed this staircase, if one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a second, and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow wash and the chocolate-hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable persistency. Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The corridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this cape, one arrived a few paces further on, in front of a door which was all the more mysterious because it was not fastened. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... plinth The amorous colocynth Yearns for the aloe, faint with rapturous thrills, How can he hymn their throes Knowing, as well he knows, That they are ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... heaven wheel his angry way; And hordes of men Bleared with unrestful sleep rise up another day, Their bodies racked with aftermaths of toil. Over the city, in each gasping street, Shudders a haze of heat, Reverberant from pillar, span and plinth. Once more, cribbed in this monstrous labyrinth Sacrificed to the Minotaur of Greed Men bear the turmoil, glare, sweat, brute inharmonies; Denial of each simplest human need, Loss of life's meaning as day lags on day; ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... apparently of white marble (really of deal, well washed with whitening and size) occupies a diagonal position across the center of the stage, facing slightly toward the left. Its base or plinth is formed of two or three successive platforms or steps of the same material. At the foot a woman kneels, clasping her arms around the cross, as though she had just thrown herself into that position in escaping from some danger. Her gaze should be directed upward. A loose brown robe and hood, the ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger

... and her Ages, but man 'passeth away.' These tombs have pillars extremely like the two palace-pillars, only that these are round, and mine are square: for I chose it so: but the same band near the top, then over this the closed lotus-flower, then the small square plinth, which separates them from the architrave, only mine have no architrave; the tombs consist of a little outer temple or court, then comes a well, and inside another chamber, where, I suppose, the dead were, a ribbon-like astragal surrounding the walls, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... for bas-reliefs symbolical of the design of the Institution: the attic story of the hall has been recently, or is to be, surmounted by a finely-sculptured figure of Minerva. The area round the building is enclosed with a handsome iron palisade on a lofty plinth of masonry, with pedestals at the angles of the steps leading to the portico and side entrances. The centre comprises the Hall and the Theatre; one of the wings is appropriated as an Academy of the Fine Arts, with exhibition rooms, and the other as a Museum of Natural ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... see that Mantegna's antiquarianism was not simply a youthful phase, but lasted till the very end of his career. The subject is the reception of the Phrygian mother of the gods among the recognised divinities of the Roman State, as is indicated on the plinth by the inscription. In the centre is Claudia Quinta about to kneel before the bust of the goddess. Behind is Scipio, and in the background are monuments to his family. The composition includes twenty-two figures. It is significant that the subject and its treatment are so entirely classic as ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... turret stair in the South-West tower is exposed, but the basement of the house unfortunately occupies the lower part of the northern one. The exterior of this is however easily accessible from an enclosure known as the Wood Yard, the much decayed spreading plinth and a few feet of walling above it not having been destroyed. Above this, grievous damage has been perpetrated by the casing and complete obliteration of the mouldings and arcading which remained. The towers ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... chronological order, the principal actions of the French army, from the departure of the troops from Boulogne to the battle of Austerlitz. The figures are near three feet high, and their number said to be two thousand. This sumptuous monument stands on a plinth of polished granite, surmounted by an iron railing; and, from its size and position, has an imposing appearance when seen from any ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... he could, and so came at last to the Place Royale, where he found the crowd to be most dense. From the plinth of the equestrian statue of Louis XV, a white-faced young man was excitedly addressing the multitude. His youth and dress proclaimed the student, and a group of his fellows, acting as a guard of honour to him, kept the immediate precincts ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... Cemetery. My interest being awakened, I made a pilgrimage to it the other day, and was shocked by its neglected condition. The coping has been badly cemented, and a crack extends from the upper right-hand corner to the base of the plinth, right across the inscription. Doubtless a few shillings would repair the damage; but may I suggest, Sir, that some worthier memorial is due to this pioneer of woman's higher activities? I have thought ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... at not being invited round to the door. She twisted from her seated position and bent herself downwards, but not even by standing on the plinth was it possible for Dick to get his lips into contact with hers as she held them. By great exertion she might have reached a little lower; but then she would have exposed ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... culminated in the vast bewildering facade of the Hall of the Winds and the Palace flaunting its royal standard—five colours blazoned on cloth of gold. But it was not these that held Roy's gaze. It was the group of Brahmin temples, elaborately carven, rose-red from plinth to summit, rising through flights of crows and iridescent pigeons; their monolithic forms clean cut against the dusty haze; their shallow steps flanked with marble elephants, splashed with orange-yellow robes of holy men and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... order, approached by a small flight of steps; on each side is a long window, divided into two heights by a stone transum (panelled). Under the lower window is a raised panel also; and in the flank of the building the plinth is furnished with openings; each of the windows is filled with ornamental iron-work, for the purpose of ventilating the vaults or catacombs. The flank of the church has a central projection, occupied by antae, and six insulated Ionic columns; the windows in the inter-columns are in the same style ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... a third pavement defined by gilded posts upholding a continuous row of lamps, ready for lighting at the going down of the sun. The last pavement was of gray granite polished mirror-like by the friction of millions of bare feet; and upon it, like the pedestal of a monument upon a plinth, rested the base of the Holy House, a structure of glassy white marble about two feet in height, with a bench of sharp inclination from the top. At intervals it was studded with massive brass rings. Upon the base the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... of that iron crag," and traversing the seventh and last gate reached the ruined Ambarkhana or Elephant-stable on the hill top. It is a picture of great desolation which meets the eye. The fragment of a wall or plinth, covered with rank creepers, an archway of which the stones are sagging into final disruption, and many a tumulus of coarse brown grass are all that remain of the wide buildings which once surrounded the Ambarkhana. The latter, ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... nothing to the real point in hand. The subject of the whole play is not the exile's revolt, the rebel's repentance, or the traitor's reward, but above all it is the son's tragedy. The inscription on the plinth of this tragic statue ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the summit or vertex), in architecture, a statue or ornament of any kind placed on the apex of a pediment. The term is often restricted to the plinth, which forms the podium merely for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... conspicuous monument in the aisle is that of John Trehearne, servant to Queen Elizabeth and "Gentleman Portar" to James I. Flanked by two pilasters, carved in the Italian style, supporting a plainer canopy, the monument consists of three parts: first a plain base; then a plinth, on the front of which (in bas-relief) are the four children of the deceased in a kneeling posture; and, lastly, on the top of the tomb, the kneeling figures of Trehearne and his wife in the picturesque costume and ruff collars of the age. The principal ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... holding a sword and cap of maintenance, with other ensigns of the City's grandeur and re-erection. The altitude from the pavement is 202 feet; the diameter of the shaft (or body) of the column is 15 feet; the ground bounded by the plinth or lowest part of the pedestal is 28 feet square, and the pedestal in height is 40 feet. Within is a large staircase of black marble, containing 345 steps 10-1/2 inches broad and 6 inches risers. Over the capital is an iron balcony encompassing a cippus, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... peculiar arrangements of the ancient monuments in two long rows on the continuous plinth that connects the bases of the pillars on each side of the nave is another of Wyatt's freaks during his terrible innovations in 1789. Not only did he sever the historical associations of centuries by these arbitrary removals, but paid ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... her scattered flowers and replacing them in the basket] There's menners f' yer! Te-oo banches o voylets trod into the mad. [She sits down on the plinth of the column, sorting her flowers, on the lady's right. She is not at all an attractive person. She is perhaps eighteen, perhaps twenty, hardly older. She wears a little sailor hat of black straw that has long been exposed to the dust and soot of London ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw

... conflagration began. It is of the Doric order, and rises from the pavement to the height of two hundred and two feet, containing within its shaft a spiral stair of black marble of three hundred and forty-five steps. The plinth is twenty-one feet square, and ornamented with sculpture by Cibber, representing the flames subsiding on the appearance of King Charles;—beneath his horse's feet a figure, meant to personify religious malice, crawls out vomiting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... base, basement; plinth, dado, wainscot; baseboard, mopboard^; bedrock, hardpan [U.S.]; foundation &c (support) 215; substructure, substratum, ground, earth, pavement, floor, paving, flag, carped, ground floor, deck; footing, ground work, basis; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... at Mrs. Bellinger's. The other members, behind her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive setting for the entertainment of celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fall ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... of the earlier monuments of the New Empire employed polygonal or slightly fluted shafts (see p.11), as at Beni Hassan and Karnak; these had a plain square abacus, with sometimes a cushion-like echinus beneath it. Around plinth served as a base for most of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... original building of Lanfranc. Professor Willis says: "The whole of Lanfranc's piers, and all that rested on them, appear to have been utterly demolished, nothing remaining but the plinth of the side-aisle walls.... The style [of Chillenden's new work] is a light Perpendicular, and the arrangement of the parts has a considerable resemblance to that of the nave of Winchester, although the latter is of a much ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... the towers—into six bays, of which the easternmost is narrower than the rest, to answer to a fragment of the old nave preserved within. The plinth is considerably higher than that of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... said Mr Brandon, stopping to pant, for Tom had seized the plinth at the foot of the balustrade and held on with all his might. "Go down in the kitchen, cook, and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... the middle of the dinner-table on the plateau of the magnificent service of gold plate. The top of the cake represented an octangular fountain, ornamented with a number of small vases, filled with miniature bouquets. The fountain rested on a circular plinth, containing a number of painted vignettes, set in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to the west of the Great Pyramid, and preserved in the Gizeh Museum. It was not a work entirely of the XXIst dynasty, as Mr. Petrie asserts, but the inscription, barely readable, engraved on the face of the plinth, indicates that it was remade by a king of the Saite period, perhaps by Sabaco, in order to replace an ancient stele of the same import which had ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... we adjourned to a little sitting-room whose walnut furniture was covered with yellow Utrecht velvet. An ornamental clock between two candelabra decorated the mantelpiece, and on the top of its black plinth, and protected and covered by a glass globe, was a red egg. I do not know why, once having observed it, I should have examined it so attentively. Children have such unaccountable curiosity. However, I must say that the egg was of a most wonderful and magnificent ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France

... us, "Antiquites d'Herculanum," in which we find a Silenus, with the usual peculiarities of figure ascribed to the jolly god rather exaggerated, and an owl sitting upon his head between two huge horns, which support stands for lamps. Another represents a flower-stalk, growing out of a circular plinth, with snail-shells hanging from it by small chains, which held the oil and wick. The trunk of a tree, with lamps suspended between the branches. Another, a naked boy, beautifully wrought, with a lamp hanging from one hand, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... domes. There were dazzling diamonds and beautiful opals, emeralds and gems from all parts of the earth; Michigan's copper globe, North Carolina's pavilion of mica designs, Montana's famous Rehan statue of solid silver resting on a plinth of gold, Arizona's old Spanish arastra ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... with such people is partly that nine times out of ten they're in the right, and partly that ten times out of ten they've got the pluck we haven't got!" And he remembered that Witterton, a journalist whom he had met at the office of the Morning Record, had climbed on to the plinth in Trafalgar Square during the Boer War and made a speech in denunciation of Chamberlain and the Rand lords, and had been badly mauled by the mob. "By God, that's courage!" he murmured. That was the sort of person Rachel ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... to cite but a few glaring instances, there are assuredly few finer pages in the history of architecture than that facade where the three receding portals with their pointed arches, the carved and denticulated plinth with its twenty-eight royal niches, the huge central rose-window flanked by its two lateral windows as is the priest by his deacon and subdeacon, the lofty airy gallery of trifoliated arcades supporting ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... From this basis the tower springs to a height which brings the local plane 130 feet above the highest spring tides. The top of the base is 30 inches above high water, and, the tower's diameter being less than that of its plinth, the set-off forms an excellent landing-stage ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... the boots with plaster of Paris; to humour them, while the plaster is yet moist, into something which resembles the human leg divine, is the work of a few moments. To fix them firmly to the wooden plinth, and prop over them the incomplete torso by means of laths cunningly concealed, occupies little more than an hour and a half. A coat of thick white paint administered below, completes the operation, and Parmentier is erect again, and apparently none the worse for ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... wisdom in the years that followed, Irene. "The Resurrection Day" became in my mind's eye something more and something—something more complex. The little round plinth on which your figure stood erect and solitary—it no longer afforded room for all the imagery I ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen

... things gradually changed for the better in October and November. An old Brahmin of Secundra Rao narrated that some years before 1810 the harvest was so plentiful that on the occasion he built a house which was on a very high plinth: he filled the plinth instead of with mud with an inferior course of small grain called 'kodun,' selling at that time uncommonly cheap, much lower than the cost of mud would be; when the famine came he dug up the coarse grain, which was found good, and sold it, and with the ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene

... passage through the street, with the noise of their feet and voices, there were, far beyond counting, those short, stubbed girls and women as typically cockney still as the costers ever were. They were of a plinth-like bigness up and down, and their kind, plain, common faces were all topped with narrow-brimmed sailor-hats, mostly black. In their jargoning hardly an aspirate was in its right place, but they looked as if their hearts were, and if no word came from their lips with its true quality, but with ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... reeds and well in the long shadows of the willows. If he remained perfectly motionless she might overlook him at that distance, or take him for one of the statues. He remembered also that as he was resting on his elbow, his half-submerged body lying on the plinth below water, he was somewhat in the attitude of one of the river gods. And there was no other escape. If he dived he might not be able to keep under water as long as she remained, and any movement ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... is in a recess, with columns on each side; and the large mirror over it, and which is finished by the cornice, is faced by a similar one, also in a recess, with white columns, standing on a plinth on each side. The windows are finished by the former cornice, that extends round the rooms, and have similar columns on each side with Victories on them, and a mirror between. The room is white and gold, with delicate arabesques, and ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... came forward, and Bart took her hands and hoped she would look upon him as an older brother long absent, and just returned. And little lisping George, staring at him curiously, "Are you Plinth Arthur?" ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... been interrupted by the Medes and Scythians, for it was left unfinished. Its proposed area was very small. The rooms were narrow and ill arranged, and their walls were decorated at foot with slabs of bare limestone instead of sculptured alabaster. Above the plinth thus formed they were covered with roughly executed paintings upon plaster, instead of with enamelled bricks. Both plan and decoration show evidence of haste and disquiet. The act of sovereignty had to be done, but all certainty of the morrow had vanished. From the moment in which ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... sprout upon the plinth decayed Of these low columns, and the snake hath found Her haunt 'neath altar-steps with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... captive's breath,— The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death! Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light, Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; They found him seated with the ancient men,— The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,— ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... style. There is usually a strong architectural feeling about the chest, the front being divided into panels, which are plain in the more ordinary examples, and richly carved in the choicer ones. The plinth and frieze are often of well-defined guilloche work, or are carved with arabesques or conventionalized flowers. Architectural detail, especially the detail of wainscoting, has indeed been followed with considerable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... "Oh, she is giving the last touch to her eyelids, or she is arranging a chaplet for me; she will come presently, more beautiful of the delay!" He sat down then to admire a candelabrum—a bronze plinth on rollers, filigree on the sides and edges; the post at one end, and on the end opposite it an altar and a female celebrant; the lamp-rests swinging by delicate chains from the extremities of drooping palm-branches; altogether a wonder in its way. But the silence ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... demi-pagoda, the gigantic figure of a reclining bull, hewn from a single mammoth block of black granite, and supposed to be of great antiquity. It stands within an open space, raised some twelve feet above the surrounding court, upon a granite plinth of the same color, but how it could have been raised there intact is ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... case there had been taken a gigantic image of Lucien Apleon, and it had been reared upon a plinth of dark green marble, upon the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... chancel.—The central buttress, flanked, like the two lateral ones, with cylindrical pillars, divides this portion of the church into two equal portions. The general appearance of these buttresses, and the circumstance of their being supported upon a fillet and plinth, would almost warrant the calling of them pilasters; and those upon the northern side of the chancel, Figure B, assume that character even more decidedly, having no projection beyond the cornice, which they support as an entablature.—It will be remarked, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... framed in oak, rising 10 ft. from the floor, thus—1 ft. 3.5 in. of plinth and frames, enclosing panelled gratings to allow the hot air to escape; on this the wooden bottoms of the range was built; then 3.5 in. and 3 in. frame at bottom and top, enclosing 7 ft. 6 in. space for glass, and 8 in. frieze moulding; ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... taking the sun placidly. The silver-grey stone, cut, if it came from this neighbourhood at all, from some now forgotten quarry, has the fine, close-grained texture of antique marble. The great northern gable is almost a classic pediment. The horizontal lines of plinth and ridge and cornice are kept unbroken, the roof of sea-grey slates being pitched less angularly than is usual in this rainy clime. A welcome contrast, the Prior thought it, to the sort of architectural nightmare he came ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... his way close to the foot of the plinth where the mayor was elevated. The commander's head was tipped back, his goggling eyes were full of anguished rebuke, and his ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... the rule, sometimes extending to the floor and often standing on heavy, square plinth blocks the height of the skirting beneath its molding. There are instances of both types at Mount Pleasant and Whitby Hall. The thickness of the walls in houses of brick and stone encouraged the custom ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... copper flames, a big goblet, and a pair of scales with an egg in one pan balanced against a skull in the other. He had a long bifurcate beard made of gold wire, feet like a bird's, and other rather startling anatomical features. His throne was set upon a stone plinth about twenty feet high, into the front of which a doorway opened; behind him was a wooden screen, ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper

... the picked men of the Districts with the Divisions and Collectorates awaiting them. They are simply the rank and file—the food for fever—sharing with the ryot and the plough-bullock the honor of being the plinth on which the State rests. The older ones have lost their aspirations; the younger are putting theirs aside with a sigh. Both learn to endure patiently until the end of the day. Twelve years in the rank and file, men say, will sap the hearts of the bravest ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... with symbolical devices. Sir John Gardner Wilkinson[75-*] speaks of it as one of the largest and most valuable he has seen, containing twenty pounds' worth of gold. "It consisted of a massive ring, half an inch in its largest diameter, bearing an oblong plinth, on which the devices were engraved, one inch long, six-tenths in its greatest and four-tenths in its smallest breadth. On one face was the name of a king, the successor of Amunoph III., who lived about B.C. 1400; on the other a lion, with ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... pedestal, which was interred 30 feet, was removed: it was composed of two parts, the ogee and basement being of the same mass, and the plinth of white marble. All the preparations were made for this last operation on the 10th of September, with the same solemnities; 140 horses and 800 men were employed. The pope selected this day for the solemn entrance ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... in the foundations of a shrine of the god Hennu during the reign of Semti, or Hesepti, a king of the Ist dynasty. Another rubric in the same papyrus says that the text was cut upon the alabaster plinth of a statue of Menkaura (Mycerinus), a king of the IVth dynasty, and that the letters were inlaid with lapis lazuli. The plinth was found by Prince Herutataf, a son of King Khufu (Cheops), who carried it off to his king and exhibited ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge

... TOBY-DOG begin to feel uncomfortably conscious of the coming storm, which is yet but a slate-blue plinth thickly painted at the bottom of the dull ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... lengthwise, and the other crosswise. These are glued together by their faces, so as to form a piece five inches long, three fourths of an inch broad, and one third of an inch thick, which is stuck by its lower end into a little plinth of wood, presenting their edge to the view. The fibres of the wood you know are dilated, but not lengthened by moisture. The slip, therefore, whose grain is lengthwise, becomes a standard, retaining always the same precise length. That which has its grain crosswise, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... huge wall, so wide that three chariots could drive side by side on the top, and built of bricks made of the clay of the country, dried in the sun and cemented with bitumen, guarded at the base by a plinth fifty feet in height, and with immense ditches round it, about sixty miles in circumference. Within were huge palaces, built of the same bricks, faced with alabaster, and the rooms decked with cedar, gilding, and ivory, and raised ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... sole; and, with shafts as with heroes, it is rather better to put the sandal off than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed, occasions on which a pedestal may be necessary; it may be better to raise a shaft from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others, its companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher shaft; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if otherwise too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... sides are slightly channelled; and sometimes, as at Kalabsheh, the flutings are divided into four groups of five each by four vertical flat stripes (fig. 60). The polygonal pillar has always a large, shallow plinth, in the form of a rounded disc. At El Kab it bears the head of Hathor, sculptured in relief upon the front (fig. 61); but almost everywhere else it is crowned with a simple square abacus, which joins it to the architrave. Thus treated, it bears a certain family likeness ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... in fact, halted, and was leaning over the parapet of the Embankment, a few yards from Cleopatra's Needle; and as he passed the plinth some impression of it must have bitten itself on the retina; for coiled among the stars lay two motionless sphinxes green-eyed, with sheathed claws, watching lazily while the pressure bore him down to them, and down—and still down. . ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... interposed between each pair of tall ones. A splendid specimen of this treatment is to be seen at S. John's College, Cambridge, where the bookcases were put up soon after the completion of the library in 1628. Though the plinth and central pilaster have been taken away, and the levels of the shelves changed, their original appearance can be recovered at a glance. On the top of all the low cases there was a desk, in memory of that of ancient times. At the end of the taller cases is a panel ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark

... intermediate shafts between them. The former are brought to a point on the face, the latter are flatter. The caps are simple and of an ordinary transitional form, each with a square abacus. The bases are also simple, and stand on a massive square plinth, a feature not uncommon in Norman work. The arches of the main arcade are somewhat acutely pointed, and the mouldings are bold, and resemble ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... with sweat and tears, And reared a God against the morning-gold, A terror in the sunshine, seen afar, And worshipped by the King; but, drunk with pride, Because the city fawned to bring him back, He carved upon the plinth: "Thus Gods are made, And whoso makes them otherwise shall die." And all the people praised him. . . . ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... glaring Italian style, to the Earl of Cork and his family. At Boyle's feet is the kneeling figure of his first wife, Joan; at his head is that of his second, Catherine. Over the arch is his mother, Joan, and along the margin of the plinth are nine diminutive effigies—his children. The tower was evidently constructed rather as a defence than simply for a belfry. The churchyard, where there are many ancient gravestones, is the chief centre of local superstition, and here all local ghostly visitations are alleged to take place. Myrtle ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... "As up the misty stream The Norseman crept to-day, and signals white Waved kind salutes from yon opposing shore; And as ye peered the dusky vista through, To catch first glimpse of yonder glorious plinth, Yet saw it not till I your glance directed,— So high it towered above the common plane;— So, towering over Time, shall Brock e'er stand.— So, from those banks, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... the curls of the hyacinth By the fallen plinth, And make them glossy with morning dew By sunrise tinted with purple and blue; And out of the sunset sky I'd get For the violet Yellow and red, and dark marine, And purples deep, and a tender green; And all night long, as they lay in sleep, I would paint and steep Their velvet cheeks in a ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various

... while the land of Egypt marched solemnly beside us on either hand. The river being low, we saw it from the boat as one long plinth, twelve to twenty feet high of brownish, purplish mud, visibly upheld every hundred yards or so by glistening copper caryatides in the shape of naked men baling water up to the crops above. Behind that bright emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... his antiquarian march, He crossed the tomb-strewn plain of Rome, Sat on some prostrate plinth, or clomb ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... role of the South in the progress of civilization and in the development of the arts and sciences, is not now obvious. As sure as there is here a vast mass of land with potentialities, strictly limited at present, so surely will it be cemented some day within the universal plinth of things. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... of the Temple into the confusion. He heard the shouts, and mounted the plinth of one of the immense pillars that surrounded the building. Here again He spoke. Looking at the city He hurled ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... side walls of this entrance, which bore some resemblance to the gateway of a jail. Above the arch was a long bas-relief, in hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already crumbling away and blackened. This bas-relief was surmounted by a projecting plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths had sprung up,—yellow pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, plantain, and even a little cherry-tree, already grown to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... of the pier, and they also adopt the same form in the single shaft, with the exception that multiangular shafts have often circular capitals. The base consists of a series of mouldings and frequently stands upon a double or single plinth, which in the earlier examples is square, but in later examples assumes the form of the base, and is either circular or polygonal. At Stone church, Kent, is a good example of an Early English capital, decorated with stiff-leaved ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... treading gingerly as one who ventures into precincts unknown but long respected; and as Fleetwood pulled the old-fashioned bell, Plank stole a glance over the facade, where wisps of straw trailed from sparrows' nests, undisturbed, wedged between plinth and pillar; where, behind the lace pane-screens, shadowy edges of heavy curtains framed the obscurity; where the paint had blistered and peeled from the iron railings, and the marble pillars of the portico glimmered, scarred by frosts of winters ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... conservative! They're actually discussing disarmament and an international peace pact for twenty years," she continued, "that nothing can break. Partow's statue in our capital is to have not victory, but peace on the fourth face of the plinth. They're even talking of putting up a statue to him in the Gray capital. Why not? The Grays have a statue of one of our great poets and we of one of their great scientists. And, to be as polite as they, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... sedate simplicity characterizes the general style of Mr. Westmacott's sculpture, and is conspicuous in the tout ensemble of the pile before us. The proportions of the statue and its ornamental accompaniments, to the pedestal and double plinth basement, are well regulated, and are the evident and successful result of study. The bronze, of which the statue and bas-reliefs are composed, being covered with a fine green patina (which has apparently been superinduced), ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... how the Vassalletti were able to draw their Egyptian models from a much nearer source. A fact mentioned by Winckelmann[115] proves that one of them owned and studied a statue of AEsculapius, in the plinth of which he actually engraved his own name, [V]ASSALECTVS. The statue was seen by Winckelmann in the Verospi palace, but I have not been able to ascertain its present location. In these same cloisters are some delightful figures of ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... branches of the thistle. In the panel opposite that containing the crucifix are the emblems of St. Peter and St. Paul. The remaining four panels are filled with the emblems of the four Evangelists. From this part of the base rises a richly moulded plinth, supporting the lower shaft, which is worked in diaper tracery. The knop of the shaft is encircled with eight elaborately wrought bosses, ornamented with garnets and sapphires in gold settings. Above the knop the shaft has simpler treatment, being worked with quatrefoils ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... year IX, (7th of November, 1801) BONAPARTE, as First Consul, celebrated, in great pomp, the inauguration of the Apollo; on which occasion he placed between the plinth of the statue, and its pedestal, a brass tablet bearing a ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... comes Mercury, who is as beautiful and as calm as the statue of him that rests—as if but for a moment—on its black plinth in the Naples Museum. If that statue could move like a faun, that is what Mercury should be; so it isn't easy to find an actor to play him. And his voice must be clear and sweet. Not loud. But his words mus like the telling of the hours—as befits a god. He stands there in his glory. But ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... compositions of the purest religious feeling, a painted plinth shows the seven deadly sins symbolized in an ingenious manner, and other allegorical figures of a very good style; a Paradise and a Hell, subjects which greatly imprest the minds of the artists of that epoch, complete this marvelous whole. There are in these paintings weird ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... heavy infantry, who by this time were crowding through the breach, neither heard nor heeded his curse. He lost consciousness and did not recover it till Herse, after lifting up her son and propping him against a plinth, pressed a cloth against the stump of the lance still remaining in the wound to staunch the swiftly flowing blood, and sprinkled his brow with wine. He felt her warm tears on his face, and as he looked up into her kind, faithful eyes, brimming over with tears of sympathy and regret, his heart ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... justice to this subject and to the teaching by figures that it contains, we ought also to have had the Patriarch's two wives carved on the supporting pillar or plinth, and his other son Ishmael. For, as you know, these two women are emblems, Hagar of the Old Dispensation, and Sarah of the New; the former disappears to make way for the second, the Old Law being merely the preparation for the New; and the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... his name a statue. Stern and vast It rests enthroned upon the mighty past: Fit plinth for him whose image in the mind Looms up as that of one by God designed! Fit plinth in sooth! the mighty past for him Whose simple name is Glory's synonyme! E'en Fancy's self, in her enchanted sleep, Can dream no future which may cease to keep His name in guard, like sentinel and cry From Time's ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope

... idea to do something for the school in a small way, hied him to the nearest jeweller's and purchased another silver cup, vast withal and cunningly decorated with filigree work, and standing on a massive ebony plinth, round which were little silver lozenges just big enough to hold the name of the winning house and the year of grace. This he presented with his blessing to be competed for by the dozen houses that made up the school ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... sided, then octagonal and square. Others, plain for the first third of their height, gradually finished under the ceiling by a most elaborate display of ornamentation, which reminds one of the Corinthian style. The third with a square plinth and semi-circular friezes. Taking it all in all, they made a most original and graceful picture. Mr. Y——, an architect by profession, assured us that he never saw anything more striking. He said he could ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... of Washington, D. C., then came forward to the end of the plinth to speak, and as she appeared, a man in the crowd handed her a twenty-dollar bill for the campaign in the Senate. This was the signal for others. Bills and coins were passed up. Instantly marshals ran hither and thither collecting the money in improvised ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens



Words linked to "Plinth" :   support, pillar, column, pedestal, dado, footstall, socle



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