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''cornice'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''cornice'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250804005204-00-⌔

cornice - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺

The cornice of the Wainwright Building in St. Louis.

🖼️ ➺ 🖼️ ➺

A snow cornice.

Noun

cornice (plural cornices)

  • (architecture) A horizontal architectural element of a building, projecting forward from the main walls, originally used as a means of directing rainwater away from the building’s walls.
    • ✤ It is a large square structure, two and a half stories in height, with a hipped roof rising above a handsome cornice with prominent modillions and surmounted by a balustraded belvedere.1
  • (architecture) A decorative element applied at the topmost part of the wall of a room, as with a crown molding.
    • ✤ That ceiling was covered with square compartments,[…] It was supported by a gilded cornice, carved into a thousand curious shapes and emblems, among which the horned wolf, the crest of the Avonleigh family, was conspicuous.2
    • ✤ Challenger looked up at the cornice and round at the skirting.3
    • ✤ The half-dozen pieces […] were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds and cupids. […] The bed was the most extravagant piece. Its graceful cane halftester rose high towards the cornice and was so festooned in carved white wood that the effect was positively insecure, as if the great couch were trimmed with icing sugar.4
  • (furniture) A decorative element at the topmost portion of certain pieces of furniture, as with a highboy.
    • ✤ And blood was on the roof, and great gouts of blood on the walls and on the cornice of my bed.5
  • (geography, mountaineering) An overhanging edge of snow on a ridge or the crest of a mountain and along the sides of gullies.
    • ✤ Synonym: snow cornice
    • ✤ Looking to the east we could see Api and the mountains of west Nepal, shapely snow peaks in the distance, while in the immediate foreground, much lower but still dramatic, were the peaks of Panch Chuli IV and V (III was hidden by the lip of a huge cornice), Telkot and Nagling, all of them unclimbed, all steep and challenging.6

Verb

cornice (third-person singular simple present cornices, present participle cornicing, simple past and past participle corniced)

  • (transitive) To furnish or decorate with a cornice.

Etymology

From Middle French corniche or Italian cornice, possibly from either (1) Latin cornīx (“crow”) or (2) Latin coronis (“curved line, flourish in writing”), from Ancient Greek κορωνίς (korōnís).7 See also corniche.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /ˈkɔːnɪs/
  • (US) IPA: /ˈkoɹnɪs/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1920, Frank Cousins, Phil M. Riley, The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia ‎, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company: ↩

  2. 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 113: ↩

  3. 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which Challenger Meets a Strange Colleague”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019: ↩

  4. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC: ↩

  5. 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 18: ↩

  6. 1999, Harish Kapadia, “Ascents in the Panch Chuli Group”, in Across Peaks & Passes in Kumaun Himalaya, New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 136: ↩

  7. Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “cornice”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. ↩

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