vault
Pluralvaults
Pluralvaults
Formsvaults, vaulting, vaulted
- 1A secure room in or below a bank where money and other valuables are stored, or a similar strongroom elsewhere.
The robbers drilled up through the floor to reach the vault.
The library keeps its rarest manuscripts in a climate-controlled vault.
Similarstrongroom
- 2To leap over something, resting a hand or foot on it for support.
Runners in the race have to vault three wooden fences.
He planted a hand on the counter and vaulted over into the kitchen.
Similarleap, jump, hurdle, clear, spring
Note
Over is optional: the fugitive vaulted the fence, or vaulted over it, with no change of meaning. The planted hand is what separates it from a plain jump, and it explains the sports built on the word, from the pole vault to the gymnast's move.
- 3An arched structure of stone or brick that forms and supports a ceiling or roof, standing alone or as part of a larger building.
The cathedral's vault soars high above the nave, ribbed like the inside of a ship.
Painters spent four years covering the vault of the chapel with scenes from the Bible.
Note
Latin volvere, to roll or turn, lies behind the builder's word, which reached English through Old French volte, modern voûte. The leap over a fence came by a separate road, through Italian voltare and Middle French volter, and was only later made to look like this word. In Thomas Gray's Elegy, the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault stand for all the grandeur of a great church.
- 4A burial chamber, especially one built underground.
Six generations of the family lie in the vault beneath the chapel.
The coffin was carried down the narrow steps into the vault.
Similartomb
Note
Among its neighbors, a tomb can be any grave or monument, a mausoleum is a building of its own, and a crypt lies beneath a church. A vault is a chamber, often underground, made to hold many burials over time, which is why the family vault, opened again for each generation, is its most familiar form.
- 5In gymnastics, a move on the vault in which the gymnast runs, pushes off the table with the hands and flies to the landing.
She landed her second vault without taking a single step.
His vault included two and a half twists before the landing.
Note
Each vault falls into three parts: preflight, from the springboard onto the table; the block, when the hands touch and leave it; and postflight, the flips and twists before the landing. Vaults come in families by their entry, and two of the main ones are the handspring and the Tsukahara.
- 6In gymnastics, the apparatus that gymnasts run at and leap over, pushing off it with their hands.
The coach lowered the vault for the younger gymnasts.
She sprinted down the runway, hit the springboard, and pushed off the vault.
Note
Gymnasts also call the apparatus the table, and older writing knows it as the vaulting horse. It is only one part of the setup: a gymnast sprints down the runway, hits a springboard placed in front of it, and only then pushes off the vault itself with both hands.
- 7A cellar or other underground room used for storage.
Barrels of wine were stored in the cool vault beneath the kitchen.
The old shop had a vault under the sidewalk where coal was once kept.
Similarcellar
- 8
- 9The space under an arched roof, especially an underground room or, in obsolete church use, a crypt.
Our footsteps echoed through the vault beneath the old market hall.
Pilgrims crowded into the vault under the abbey church to see the saint's shrine.
Similarcrypt, undercroft, chamber
Note
Here the word names the room rather than the arched ceiling over it, usually a space below ground. Its church use for a crypt is obsolete, and crypt is the word to use today; a vault beneath a church is more likely to be read as a burial chamber.
- 10Anything shaped like an arched ceiling seen from below, especially the sky or the roof of a cave.
Stars glittered across the vault of the night sky.
Bats hung in dense clusters from the vault of the cavern.
Note
Poets have long looked up and seen a ceiling: Shakespeare's Lear cries out that heaven's vault should crack, and Marlowe writes of piercing Avernus' darksome vaults to pull the triple-headed dog from hell. The figure still serves for the night sky and the roof of a cave, and it carries a weight of poetry that a plain word like roof does not.
- 11
- 12To build something in the form of a vault, or to cover it with one.
Medieval masons chose to vault the crypt with low brick arches.
Tall elms vaulted the lane, their branches meeting overhead.
Similararch
Note
Masons vault a crypt, but trees and arches can vault a path too: in Walter Scott's Waverley (1814), a shady arch vaulted the broad green alley. The past participle is often used as an adjective for any arched ceiling or roof: a vaulted ceiling, a vaulted cellar, a vaulted nave.
- 13To store something in a vault.
Serious collectors vault their rarest coins rather than keep them at home.
The studio vaulted the original film negatives in an old salt mine.
Similarstore
- 14In computing, an encrypted digital archive that can be opened only with the right key or password.
Her password manager keeps every login in a single encrypted vault.
The company stores its signing keys in a vault that even its own engineers cannot read.
Note
Software borrows the strongroom for a place that holds secrets: password managers keep every login in one vault, and servers keep encryption keys and access tokens in another. What guards it is encryption, not a locked door, so whoever holds the master password or key holds everything inside, and losing that key can mean losing the contents for good.
- 15In gymnastics, the competition event in which gymnasts jump over the vaulting horse, or a performance in that event.
She won gold on vault and silver on the floor exercise.
The men's vault final starts right after the rings.
Note
As the name of an event it usually goes without an article, like floor and rings: she won gold on vault, the men's vault final. Context keeps the apparatus, the move performed on it and the competition apart, so all three can share one short word without confusion.
- 16In video games, to remove an item, character, map, or other content from a game in an update.
The developers vaulted the grenade launcher in the latest patch.
Players were furious when the studio decided to vault their favorite map.
Similarremove
Note
Gamers took the image of locking something away rather than destroying it, so a vaulted item may come back in a later season, though not always. The verb is often passive, as in more items will get vaulted, and it is used across online games, from Fortnite to Overwatch and Valorant, for weapons, characters and whole maps.
- 17In horsemanship, a volte: a circular movement made by the horse.
The judge watched closely as the mare traced a vault near the letter B.
Each vault should be the same size, with the horse bent evenly through its body.
Similarvolte
Note
Riders more often write the French-looking volte for this circle, and both forms go back to turning, through Middle French volter, to turn or spin around. In a dressage test it is one of the figures a horse traces in the arena, showing that it can bend and balance evenly through its body.
- 18An underground or covered channel for water or waste, such as a drain or sewer.
Rainwater from the main street drained away through a stone vault beneath the road.
The town's old vaults carried its waste down to the river.
Note
The obsolete sense carries the idea of covering below ground over to running water: a vault could be the covered channel that took rain or waste away. In older writing, then, a town's vaults may be its sewers rather than its cellars or its tombs, and only the setting tells which. Present-day English says drain or sewer.
- 19An underground or covered tank for holding water or waste, such as a cistern or cesspit.
The house drew its drinking water from a vault under the courtyard.
Every few months a cart came at night to empty the vault behind the inn.
Note
Where the sewer meaning carries water or waste away, this obsolete sense holds it: a covered tank under a courtyard for drinking water, or a cesspit behind an inn waiting for the night cart. One word could thus name both clean water and filth, divided only by what was stored in it.
- 20A polite word for a toilet room that drains into a cesspit or sewer, such as an outhouse or lavatory.
He excused himself and went out to the vault behind the tavern.
The servants scrubbed the vault and emptied the slops every morning.
Note
It began as a polite way round naming the privy: the word for the pit or sewer below was given to the room above. The euphemism is obsolete, and a modern writer would say outhouse, privy or lavatory; in a historical novel, though, a vault behind the tavern can carry the period's own delicacy.
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Origins
From Middle English vaute, from Old French volte (modern voûte), from Vulgar Latin *volta, a regularized form of Latin volūta, the past participle of volvere, “to roll, turn.” Compare Spanish vuelta, “turn”; it is a doublet of volute.
Borrowed from Middle French volter, “to turn or spin around; to frolic,” from Italian voltare, itself from a Vulgar Latin frequentative of Latin volvere. It was later assimilated to the other word vault.