FOLIATION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Foliation

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/fˌoʊliˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Foliation n.

The process of forming into a leaf or leaves.

The manner in which the young leaves are disposed within the bud. " The... foliation must be in relation to the stem."

The act of beating a metal into a thin plate, leaf, foil, or lamina.

The act of coating with an amalgam of tin foil and quicksilver, as in making looking-glasses.

(Arch.) The enrichment of an opening by means of foils, arranged in trefoils, quatrefoils, etc.; also, one of the ornaments. See Tracery.

(Geol.) The property, possessed by some crystalline rocks, of dividing into plates or slabs, which is due to the cleavage structure of one of the constituents, as mica or hornblende. It may sometimes include slaty structure or cleavage, though the latter is usually independent of any mineral constituent, and transverse to the bedding, it having been produced by pressure.

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Etymology of 'Foliation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Foliation" Quotes from Famous Books

... Reformation. "It may be readily noted," says the writer of a recent article on Winchester Cathedral, "how the new ashlar was brought down to the level of this vanished altar, and how Wykeham's vaulting-shaft has been made to end in foliation where it once rose in receipt of prayers and wax-candles vowed in return for mercies vouchsafed." In the seven westerly piers of the south aisle, the Norman stonework has merely received new mouldings; while flat Norman buttresses can ...

— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... how I should answer. The cusped arch, too, was it actually not intended to imitate vegetation? Mr. Ruskin seems to think so. He says that it is merely the special application to the arch of the great ornamental system of foliation, which, "whether simple as in the cusped arch, or complicated as in tracery, arose out of the love of leafage. Not that the form of the arch is intended to imitate a leaf, "but to be invested with the same characters of beauty which the designer ...

— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... folio; lithophyll (fossil leaf). Associated words: foliar, foliferous, foliaceous, foliation, defoliate, defoliation, frond, bract, frondation, frondesce, frondescence, verticil, whorl, acanthus ...

— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... give any conception of an Alpine cliff without minuteness of detail, and by mere breadth of effect, as it would be to give a conception of the facades of Rouen or Rheims, without indicating any statues or foliation. When the statues and foliation are once got, as much blue mist and thundercloud as you ...

— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... however, in this form no real intention of imitating a flower, any more than in the meeting of the tails of these two Etruscan griffins. The notable circumstance in this piece of Gothic is its advanced form of crocket, and its prominent foliation, with nothing in the least ...

— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin