vault

Meanings

Noun

• An arched masonry structure supporting and forming a ceiling, whether freestanding or forming part of a larger building.
• Any arched ceiling or roof.
• Anything resembling such a downward-facing concave structure, particularly the sky and caves.
• The space covered by an arched roof, particularly underground rooms and church crypts.
• Any cellar or underground storeroom.
• Any burial chamber, particularly those underground.
• The secure room or rooms in or below a bank used to store currency and other valuables; similar rooms in other settings.
• Any archive of past content.
• An encrypted digital archive.
• An underground or covered conduit for water or waste; a drain; a sewer.
• An underground or covered reservoir for water or waste; a cistern; a cesspit.
• A room employing a cesspit or sewer: an outhouse; a lavatory.
• An act of vaulting, formerly by deer; a leap or jump.
• A piece of apparatus used for performing jumps.
• A gymnastic movement performed on this apparatus.
• Synonym of volte: a circular movement by the horse.
• An event or performance involving a vaulting horse.

Verb

• To build as, or cover with a vault.
• To jump or leap over.

Related

Similar words

• vaulting table

Narrower meaning words

• barrel vault
• cloister vault
• compound vault
• cross vault
• cylindrical vault
• decapartite vault
• dodecapartite vault
• domical vault
• groin vault
• oblique vault
• octopartite vault
• panel vault
• polygonal vault
• quadripartite vault
• quinquepartite vault
• ribbed vault
• segmental vault
• septempartite vault
• sexpartite vault
• star vault
• stilted vault
• tripartite vault
• Welsh vault

Origin

• From Middle English vaute, vowte, from Old French volte (modern voûte), from Vulgar Latin *volta < *volvita or *volŭta, a regularization of Latin volūta (compare modern volute), the past participle of volvere. Cognate with Spanish vuelta ("turn"). volute.
• Borrowed from Middle French volter ("to turn or spin around; to frolic"), borrowed from Italian voltare, itself from a Vulgar Latin frequentative form of Latin volvere; later assimilated to Etymology 1, above.