entasis

Latin entasis, from Ancient Greek ἔντασις (éntasis, “tension, straining”), from ἐντείνω (enteínō, “to stretch or strain tight”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɛntəsɪs/

entasis (countable and uncountable, plural entases)

1. (architecture) A slight convex curvature introduced into the shaft of a column for aesthetic reasons, or to compensate for the illusion of concavity.
   • 1859, Journal of the Society of Arts, volume 7, page 484:

     It was simply the curve of the entasis, approximating infinitely near to a catenary or to a very flat hyperbola. He could not definitely say whether it was one or the other, but it was nearer to these curves than to the old-fashioned straight line.

   • 1950, William Bell Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece: An Account of Its Historic Development‎, →ISBN, page 168:

     The entasis varies in different temples and is not found in some, as, for instance, the temple of Athena Nike and in the east portico of the Erechtheum.

   • 1993, Noel W. Smith, Greek and Interbehavioral Psychology‎, page 125:

     Entasis occurred a thousand years earlier in the Sarsen stones at Stonehenge in southern England. […] Entasis is also present in Egyptian obelisks and in the vertical fins of the radiator grill of the Rolls-Royce automobile.

   • 2005, Lothar Haselberger, “4: Bending the Truth: Curvature and Other Refinements of the Parthenon”, in Jenifer Neils, editor, The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present, page 132:

     Counter to the increased entases of the pronaos and opisthodomos columns, the adjacent anta pillars and longitudinal cella walls received extraordinarily decreased entases that almost, or even fully, reached rectilinearity.

• Eastins, Saintes, Setians, Staines, nasties, sestina, tansies, tisanes