Definition of "cyma" [cy•ma]

• Either of two moldings, cyma recta or cyma reversa, having an undulating or S-shaped profile, used especially in classical architecture. Also called cymatium. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "There is one very curious passage in which he is talking about a very pretty girl, and wants to make it plain that she had a very beautiful mouth, and he says, "Her mouth was of that exquisite curve which is termed the cyma recta, or the 'Ogee arch.'""
• "The ornament about this window, especially that in the long panel below it and upon the cyma of the soffit above, is Byzantine in character, while the columns, with the exception of the capital of the one at the left, are much more Romanesque."
• "Furthermore just such cyma pieces have been discovered belonging to other structures in Olympia and amid the pre-Persian ruins on the Acropolis of Athens."