moulding or molding. Any continuous projecting or inset architectural member with a contoured profile. It defines, casts shadows, enriches, emphasizes, and separates, and is usually horizontal or vertical, although it occurs around arches and vaults. It is an essential part of architraves, bases, entablatures, and string-courses, and is found in virtually all periods of architecture except the International Modern Movement from which it was expunged. It occurs in many forms in the Classical Orders (e.g. astragal, bead, cavetto, cyma, fillet, flute, ovolo, scotia, and torus), Romanesque work (e.g. beak-head, billet, chevron, hollows, rounds, and splays), and Gothic (e.g. deep rounds, and hollows, ball-flower, dog-tooth, keels, nail-head, etc.). See bead; beak-head; bolection; bowtell; cable; cant; cavetto; chaplet; chevron; dancette; dog-tooth; dovetail; echinus; edge-roll; fascia; gadroon; gorge; hood; label; nail-head; nebule; ogee; ovolo; pellet; ressault; roll; running dog; wave. See also Orders.

moulding (mohld-ing) n. the changing of the shape of an infant's head during labour, due to movement of the bones of the skull, brought about by the pressures to which it is subjected when passing through the birth canal.