pedestal
noun
- term generally applied to the support of a statue or a vase
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈpɛdɪstəl/ / /ˈpɛdɪsˌtuːl/
noun
Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French piédestal, itself borrowed from Italian piedistallo (literally “foot stand”). Spelling influenced by Latin pēs, pedem.
- The base or foot of a column, statue, vase, lamp.
“The table and two base pedestals cost more than $4,000. The pedestals are described as having “hand applied ebonized inlay with bell flowers topped by hand carved scrolls and a fluted column.””
“The state reached a deal with the city to remove the 40-foot granite pedestal the Lee statue sat on for more than a century.”
- A place of reverence or honor.
“He has put his mother on a pedestal. You can't say a word against her.”
“It’s an old, old story. We’ve all placed people on pedestals, and then, almost inevitably, they let us down. They violate our trust. They betray us. They fall off the pedestal, or we remove them.”
- A casting secured to the frame of a truck of a railcar and forming a jaw for holding a journal box.
- A pillow block; a low housing.
- An iron socket, or support, for the foot of a brace at the end of a truss where it rests on a pier.
- a pedestal coil, group of connected straight pipes arranged side by side and one above another, used in a radiator.
- A ground-level housing for a passive connection point for underground cables.
- The measured value when no input signal is given.
- The central part of the cockpit, between the pilots, where various controls are located.
- An item upon which television cameras are mounted.
- The tough protuberant pad covering a dromedary's sternum, which, when the camel lies down, causes the abdomen to be slightly above the hot ground.
verb
Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French piédestal, itself borrowed from Italian piedistallo (literally “foot stand”). Spelling influenced by Latin pēs, pedem.
- To set or support on (or as if on) a pedestal.