vaulting

Pluralvaultings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of vault.

   Vaulting the gate, he sprinted across the pasture toward the barn.

   The masons spent two summers vaulting the nave in stone.

   Note

   As a gerund it keeps an object of any of the verb's kinds: vaulting a gate is leaping it with a hand on the bar, vaulting a nave is roofing it in stone, and vaulting an item, in a video game, is pulling it from play in an update. After be it makes the progressive (the masons were vaulting the crypt).

2. 2
   adjectivefiguratively

   Exaggerated, or bold to the point of reaching beyond what is sensible.

   Her vaulting ambition carried her from the mailroom to the boardroom, and then into a scandal.

   The founders spoke with a vaulting confidence that their sales figures never justified.

   Similaroverweening, soaring, boundless

   Oppositemodest

   Note

   Ambition is the noun it is most often paired with, but other bold states of mind take it too: Ross Douthat, in The New York Times, describes Steven Pinker as "famous for his vaulting optimism". The picture behind it is a leap that clears more than it should, so praise and warning travel together in the word.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A vaulted structure, or vaulted structures taken together as a whole.

   Fan vaulting spreads across the chapel ceiling like the ribs of an open fan.

   Restorers cleaned centuries of soot from the vaultings above the nave.

   Note

   As a mass noun it names a building's vaults taken together, often with the kind in front: fan vaulting, rib vaulting. The plural picks out the separate vaults, as when Robert Byron, in The Station, sees scenes from the life of Christ spread "over the high vaultings and walls" on an immense scale.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The craft of building vaults, or a particular method of building them.

   The guild guarded its secrets of vaulting as carefully as its accounts.

   The architect chose a method of vaulting that laid thin clay tiles in several layers.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The sport of performing gymnastic and dance routines on the back of a horse that circles on a longe line.

   The vaulting team rehearsed their routine while the horse cantered on the longe line.

   Vaulting demands the balance of a gymnast and the calm of an experienced rider.

6. 6
   adjective

   Rising upward or arching over something, like a vault.

   Vaulting elms met high above the lane, turning it into a green tunnel.

   Light poured through the vaulting glass roof of the conservatory.

   Similararching, soaring

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