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PLIMPTON

Volume 16 · 175 words · 1815 Edition

a town of Devonshire, in England, seated on a branch of the river Plym, which had once a castle, now in ruins. It sends two members to parliament; Pliny, a genus of plants belonging to the polyandria clas of Linnaeus. See Botany Index.

Plinth, Orlo, or Orlo, in Architecture, a flat square member, in the form of a brick. It is used as the foundation of columns, being that flat square table under the moulding of the base and pedestal at the bottom of the whole order. It seems to have been originally intended to keep the bottom of the original wooden pillars from rotting. Vitruvius also calls the Tuscan abacus plinth.

Plinth of a Statue, &c. is a base, either flat, round, or square, that serves to support it.

Plinth of a Wall, denotes two or three rows of bricks advancing out from a wall; or, in general, any flat high moulding, that serves in a front-wall to mark the floors, to sustain the eaves of a wall, or the larmier of a chimney.