The arts give us so many terms with interesting histories: arpeggio, pirouette, collage. Today, we turn to the technical terminology of architecture and consider the word "cornice," a word that comes to English from Italian but that has murky roots in Latin. Its obscure origins give us an opportunity to consider the changing nature of the modern cityscape—as beautifully described in Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle—where even the ledges are alive.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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