caryatid
/ˌkɛəɹiˈætɪd/
Etymology
From Middle French cariatide, from Latin caryatides, from Ancient Greek Καρυάτιδες (Karuátides), plural of Καρυᾶτις (Karuâtis, “a priestess of Artemis, female figures used as bearing-shafts”), from καρυατίζω (karuatízō, “dance the Karyatid festival dance”) from Καρύαι (Karúai, “a town in Laconia with a temple of Artemis and a festival”).
caryatid means A sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
caryatid is pronounced /ˌkɛəɹiˈætɪd/.
Why “caryatid” is a great word
CARYATID — [Noun] A sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support, taking the place of a column or pillar and supporting an entablature on her head. From Middle French *cariatide*, from Latin *caryatides*, from Ancient Greek *Καρυάτιδες* (*Karuátides*), plural of *Καρυᾶτις* (*Karuâtis*, "a priestess of Artemis"), from *Καρύαι* (*Karúai*, "a town in Laconia with a temple of Artemis"). Unlike *atlantes*, their brawny male counterparts, or a *pilaster*, an abstract flattened column, a caryatid is a monument of arrested motion, a body in perpetual service. She is the Erechtheion's six sisters bearing the porch roof in silent unison, the strain in the marble drapery of a tomb figure, the solemn dignity of a form condemned to hold a world not her own—architecture's most poignant confession that its grandest ideas rest upon captive shoulders.
noun
- A sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head.“She wore on the top of her head an upright circular cap that made her resemble a caryatid disburdened, and on other parts of her person strange combinations of colours, stuffs, shapes, of metal, mineral and plant.”