Other forms: vaults, vaulted, vaulting
A vault is a room or a ceiling built as a curve of stone or brick rather than a flat one. Stand in a church and look up at the ribbed stone sky, or go down into a cellar and see the same curve low over your head.
Because that curve is the strongest way to roof a small space, the word slid across to the rooms themselves: a bank vault with a round steel door and a wheel on it, and a family vault under a church floor where people are buried. Then there is a second vault, a verb, and it looks unrelated until you notice both are about turning — you vault a gate with one hand on the top and both legs over, done in a second. That gives pole vault, and the vault in gymnastics, where you run at a padded block and go over it. The verb takes its object straight or takes over: vault the fence, vault over the fence.
1nounvaultA roof or ceiling built as a curve of stone or brick.~34%
“The vault above the altar is painted blue with gold stars.”
synonyms: arch
2nounstrongroomA strongroom with thick walls and a heavy door, where money or valuables are kept.~39%
“The gold sits in a vault under the bank.”
synonyms: strongroom, safe
3verbleapTo jump over something in one movement, pushing off with your hands or a pole.~24%
“He vaulted the fence without breaking step.”
4nounundergroundAn underground room where people are buried.~3%
“The family vault is under the church floor.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 170 sentences found in the wild and placed 160 of them on a sense (10 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
V-AULT → a WALL over your head
Two stone walls grow up out of the floor, bend in over your head and meet at the top. There is no roof on this building — the walls are the roof.
hooks ontowall
Latin volvere meant to roll or to turn, and its past participle volūta gave Old French volte and then English vault: stone turned over into an arch. The jumping vault arrived separately, through Middle French volter, to turn or spin about — and the two, both of them turnings, settled back into one spelling.
Latin
volūta
Vulgar Latin
*volta
Old French
volte
Middle English
vaute
English, today
vault
Built from
From Middle English vaute, vowte, from Old French volte (modern voûte), from Vulgar Latin volta < volvita or volŭta, a regularization of Latin volūta (compare modern volute (“spire”)), the past participle of volvere (“roll, turn”). Cognate with Spanish vuelta (“turn”) and Portuguese volta ("turn"). a doublet of volute. Displaced native Old English hwealf.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA