voussoir

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

• IPA^(key): /vuˈswɑːr/

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.

• voussoired

• voussoir on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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

• IPA^(key): /vu.swaʁ/

voussoir m (plural voussoirs)

1. (architecture) voussoir

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