Corbel

A corbel

In architecture a corbel or console is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal sticking out from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight.^[1] It is a type of bracket.^[1] A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall. A console, by comparison, is a piece applied to the structure. A piece of structural wood projecting in the same way was called a "tassel" or a "bragger" in the UK.^[2] The technique of corbelling, where rows of corbels support a projecting wall or parapet, has been used since Neolithic, or New Stone Age, times.

The word "corbel" comes from Old French and derives from the Latin corbellus, a diminutive of corvus (a raven) which refers to the beak-like appearance.^[2]^[3] Similarly, the French refer to a bracket-corbel, usually a load-bearing internal feature, as a corbeau (a crow).

Corbel Media

An interior look at the roof of a corbelled house in South Africa
Corbels quarried for London Bridge but unused; Swell Tor quarry, Dartmoor
Corbelled arch at the Royal Palace of Ugarit, 2nd millennium BC
Corbelling to resemble machicolations on an 18th-century folly, Broadway Tower, England

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0). Oxford University Press, 2009
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 "Corbel". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh). (1911). Cambridge University Press.
↑ Oxford English Dictionary gives a similar etymology but from Latin corvellum or corvellus

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[OxfordED2-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0). Oxford University Press, 2009

[Britannica11-2] 2.0 ^2.1 "Corbel". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh). (1911). Cambridge University Press.

[3] Oxford English Dictionary gives a similar etymology but from Latin corvellum or corvellus

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