abacus.

1. A flat slab forming the top of a column capital.

2. A device using movable counters on rods or grooves to assist calculation.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• stone abacus
• abacus of a capital

On the page

A crack crossed the stone abacus above the carved capital.

The drawing placed the abacus between the widening capital and the structure above.

Usage notes

Primary category: architecture / spatial description. Forms: Singular abacus; plural abacuses or abaci. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: precise built-space description, structural component naming, spatial orientation, interior material description. Disciplines: fiction writing, architectural description, advanced descriptive English. Commonness: moderately common.