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vault

nounverbverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//vɒlt//
  • United Kingdom//vɔːlt//
  • United States//vɑlt//

An arched masonry structure supporting and forming a ceiling, whether freestanding or forming part of a larger building.

noun

  1. 1

    An arched masonry structure supporting and forming a ceiling, whether freestanding or forming part of a larger building.

    The decoration of the vault of Sainte-Chapelle was much brighter before its 19th-century restoration.

    the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

  2. 2

    Any arched ceiling or roof.

  3. 3

    figurativeAnything resembling such a downward-facing concave structure, particularly caves and the sky or firmament.

    The stalactites held tightly to the cave's vault.

    His fiery eies are fixt vpon the earth. As if he now deuiſ’d some Stratageme: Or meant to pierce Auernus darkſome vauts. To pull the triple headed dog from hell.

    Had I your tongues and eyes, Il’d vſe them so, That Heauens vault ſhould crack: ſhe’s gone for euer.

    The ſilent vaults of Death, vnknowne to Light; And Hell it ſelfe, lye naked to his ſight.

  4. 4

    The space covered by an arched roof, particularly underground rooms and (Christianity, obsolete) church crypts.

  5. 5

    Any cellar or underground storeroom.

    to banish rats that haunt our vault

  6. 6

    Any burial chamber, particularly those underground.

    Holonyms: catacomb, cuniculus

    Near-synonyms: crypt, mausoleum

    Family members had been buried in the vault for centuries.

  7. 7

    The secure room or rooms in or below a bank used to store currency and other valuables; similar rooms in other settings.

    During the extreme civil disorder prior to January 22, 1976 in Beirut, Lebanon, a guerrilla force blasted the vaults of the British Bank of the Middle East in Bab Idriss and cleared out safe deposit boxes with contents valued by former Finance Minister Lucien Dahadah at $50 million, and by another source at an "absolute minimum" of $20 million.

  8. 8

    figurativeAny archive of past content.

  9. 9

    An encrypted digital archive.

  10. 10

    A membraneless organelle found in most eukaryotic cells first identified in 1986.

  11. 11

    obsoleteAn underground or covered conduit for water or waste; a drain; a sewer.

  12. 12

    obsoleteAn underground or covered reservoir for water or waste; a cistern; a cesspit.

  13. 13

    obsoleteA room employing a cesspit or sewer: an outhouse; a lavatory.

Etymology

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"). Doublet of volute. Displaced native Old English hwealf.

verb

  1. 1

    To build as, or cover with a vault.

    The shady arch that vaulted the broad green alley.

  2. 2

    To store in a vault.

  3. 3

    To remove (an item, character, etc.) from a video game in an update.

    In future updates, most likely in season six, more items will get vaulted.

    While vaulting some old content may turn off a few players, Bungie seems intent on bringing as many players under its tent as possible first.

    Blizzard will vault the gorgeous Hanamura and other Assault maps from Overwatch's competitive mode when 'Overwatch 2' arrives.

    While some mistakes have resulted in Riot pulling Agents in the past, those changes were always temporary. If Riot is set on having only seven maps in the "Valorant," that likely means Split isn't coming back and more maps will get vaulted in the future.

verb

  1. 1

    To jump or leap over with a hand and/or foot on the item for support.

    The fugitive vaulted over the fence to escape.

    The fugitive vaulted the fence to escape.

    Parkour – often referred to as freerunning – entails creatively moving through an urban environment: flipping, jumping and vaulting across various obstacles.

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French volter (“to turn or spin around; to frolic”), borrowed from Italian voltare, itself from a Vulgar Latin frequentative form of Latin volvere; later assimilated to Etymology 1, above.

noun

  1. 1

    An act of vaulting, formerly (chiefly) by deer; a leap or jump.

  2. 2

    A piece of apparatus used for performing jumps.

  3. 3

    A gymnastic movement performed on this apparatus.

    Each vault has three segments: “preflight” (the movement from the springboard onto the table), “block” (the moment the hands touch and leave the table) and “postflight” (the flips and twists before landing). […] Handspring and Tsukahara vaults are less common than Yurchenko-style vaults, but some gymnasts specialize in them.

  4. 4

    Synonym of volte: a circular movement by the horse.

  5. 5

    An event or performance involving a vaulting horse.

Forms

plural
vaults
past tense
vaulted
past participle
vaulted
present participle
vaulting
third person singular
vaults
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).