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Noun
Its Bolnisi tuff façade, monumental cornices, and double atriums gave it a commanding presence on the city’s main thoroughfare.—Lauren Mowery, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2025 Architectural Details From cornices to skirting boards, architectural features are part of the foundation of English style.—Kristina McGuirk, Better Homes & Gardens, 28 Aug. 2025
Verb
Like its sister properties, punchy decor from Ennismore’s in-house AIME Studios blends the building’s heritage—curled cornicing and sash windows with splashes of color, including deep raspberry red headboards and playful pineapple coat hooks.—Katharine Sohn, Architectural Digest, 15 Aug. 2025 The largest reception room has ornate cornicing on the ceiling, an original fireplace and, between brass chandeliers, a disco ball.—Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 16 May 2024 See All Example Sentences for cornice
Word History
Etymology
Noun
earlier cornish, borrowed from Middle French corniche, borrowed from Italian cornice "cornice on a column," earlier, "ledge projecting from a rock wall," perhaps going back to Latin cornīc-, cornīx "crow" (assuming a figurative sense "projection, something jutting out" in Vulgar Latin), derivative (with -īc-, -ix, particularizing suffix), from a base *kor-n-, perhaps from the oblique of an n-stem *kor-ōn seen in Greek korṓnē "crow"; the base *kor- "corvid," with different suffixation, seen also in Umbrian curnaco "crow," Greek korak-, kórax "raven," Latin corvus "raven," and, if going back to Indo-European *ḱor-, Russian soróka "magpie," Polish sroka, Serbian & Croatian svrȁka (with secondary -v-), Lithuanian šárka (from Balto-Slavic *ḱor-Hk-), Sanskrit śāri- "kind of bird"
Note:
For an association between something projecting and a corvid cf. the etymology of corbel entry 1. Italian cornice has also been seen as an outcome of Greek korōnid-, korōnís "crook-beaked, curved, curved pen stroke, copestone (in the lexicographer Hesychius)," though phonologically this is implausible. The base *kor-/*ḱor- is ultimately onomatopoeic, perhaps an expansion of *kr-, the initial of other independently derived Indo-European words for corvid birds (cf. crow entry 1, raven entry 1).
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