Sunday Rest: mutule. Word Not To Use Today.

This horrid word is all the more annoying for having a vastly unhelpful dictionary definition: one of a set of flat blocks below the corona of a Doric cornice.

Did you understand that? I was fine until the words started having more than one syllable - but it's all right, I've done the research so you don't have to.

A corona (in architecture) is the flat vertical face of a cornice just above the soffit. And a soffit is...

...oh, blow this for a lark. Let's find an illustration.



1. Tympanum, 2. Acroterion, 3. Sima, 4. Cornice, 5. Mutule, 7. Frieze, 8. Triglyph, 9. Metope, 10. Regula, 11. Gutta, 12. Taenia, 13. Architrave, 14. Capital, 15. Abacus, 16. Echinus, 17. Column, 18. Fluting, 19. Stylobate

Illustration by Napoleon Vier.

So there we are. There's a mutule at Number 5. The corona, in case you're wondering, is the lower piece of the cornice.

A mutule still sounds like something you'd find in a far paragraph of an insurance contract, or else something lurking in some deep crevice of the human anatomy, though, doesn't it.

(And it doesn't look that much like a flat block, either.)

Word Not To Use Today: mutule. This word comes from the Latin word mūtulus, which means modillion...

...oh all right, I suppose I'll have to look that up, now!...

A modillion is a thing holding up a cornice. Here are a row of them.



But if they're less chunky they're called dentils, apparently.

Anyone out there still got the will to live?