cornice

Etymology

From Middle French corniche or Italian cornice, from Latin cornīx (“crow”).

noun

1. (architecture) A horizontal architectural element of a building, projecting forward from the main walls, originally used as a means of directing rainwater away from the building's walls.
2. A decorative element applied at the topmost part of the wall of a room, as with a crown molding.
   The half-dozen pieces […] were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds and cupids. […] The bed was the most extravagant piece. Its graceful cane halftester rose high towards the cornice and was so festooned in carved white wood that the effect was positively insecure, as if the great couch were trimmed with icing sugar. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess
3. A decorative element at the topmost portion of certain pieces of furniture, as with a highboy.
4. (geography, mountaineering) An overhanging edge of snow on a ridge or the crest of a mountain and along the sides of gullies.
   Looking to the east we could see Api and the mountains of west Nepal, shapely snow peaks in the distance, while in the immediate foreground, much lower but still dramatic, were the peaks of Panch Chuli IV and V (III was hidden by the lip of a huge cornice), Telkot and Nagling, all of them unclimbed, all steep and challenging. 1999, Harish Kapadia, “Ascents in the Panch Chuli Group”, in Across Peaks & Passes in Kumaun Himalaya, New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, page 136

verb

1. (transitive) To furnish or decorate with a cornice.