PORTAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Portal

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/pˈɔrtəl/ Listen

noun

Portal n.

A door or gate; hence, a way of entrance or exit, especially one that is grand and imposing. "Thick with sparkling orient gems The portal shone." "From out the fiery portal of the east."

(Arch.)

(a)

The lesser gate, where there are two of different dimensions.

(b)

Formerly, a small square corner in a room separated from the rest of the apartment by wainscoting, forming a short passage to another apartment.

(c)

By analogy with the French portail, used by recent writers for the whole architectural composition which surrounds and includes the doorways and porches of a church.

(Bridge Building) The space, at one end, between opposite trusses when these are terminated by inclined braces.

A prayer book or breviary; a portass. (Obs.)

Portal bracing (Bridge Building), a combination of struts and ties which lie in the plane of the inclined braces at a portal, serving to transfer wind pressure from the upper parts of the trusses to an abutment or pier of the bridge.

adjective

Portal adj. (Anat.) Of or pertaining to a porta, especially the porta of the liver; as, the portal vein, which enters the liver at the porta, and divides into capillaries after the manner of an artery. Note: Portal is applied to other veins which break up into capillaries; as, the renal portal veins in the frog.

See images of 'Portal'

Etymology of 'Portal'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Portal" Quotes from Famous Books

... had got there; but, try as he might, his memory would not bring him farther down the stream of time, than the hour in which he fell at Mansourah. All the rest was a blank or a feverish dream of being rowed on a river by Saracen boatmen, and left at the portal of a house which he had never seen before. Gradually recalling all his adventures since he left the castle of Wark, he remembered and felt his hand for the amulet with which he had been gifted by King Louis when ...

— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... of His children below anon or oftener, and then on each side is Truth and Nature. Nature, the kind All Mother, Truth, the divine one. How sweet to find 'em all there together guardin' and consecratin' these walls. You went in feelin' safer with such gardeens at the portal. ...

— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... oak-groves of Carine and the dark Gates of Zagros, walled in by precipices; into the ancient city of Chala, where the people of Samaria had been kept in captivity long ago; and out again by the mighty portal, riven through the encircling hills, where he saw the image of the High Priest of the Magi sculptured on the wall of rock, with hand uplifted as if to bless the centuries of pilgrims; past the entrance of the narrow defile, filled from end to end with orchards of peaches and ...

— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... facade broken by richly carved marble cornices supported by marble columns and pilasters; its flat surfaces covered with brilliantly coloured mosaics, and having above its five portals[6] arched alcoves in which were statues: that over the royal portal, the aula regia, being a great statue of the Emperor or of ...

— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... out of it, this sudden flashing pursues me. It might be called the 'Demon Lighthouse.' For a moment, in picturesque gloom, watching the shadows cast by the Hogarthian gateway, I may be thinking of our great English painter sitting sketching the lean Frenchwomen, noting, too, the portal where the English arms used to be, when suddenly the 'Demon Lighthouse' directs his glare full on me, describes a sweep, is gone, and all is dark again. It suggests the policeman going his rounds. How the ...

— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

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