"I was reading a guide book which explained that the bulging of the columns 'base - known as entasis - is to counteract the well-known visual illusion that if you don't bulge them out in the middle, they appear waisted in the middle.    From Wordnik.com. Reference

The entasis as given by Fra Giocondo in the edition of 1511. 2.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Ten Books on Architecture] Reference

The entasis from the temple of Mars Ultor in Rome compared with.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Ten Books on Architecture] Reference

The entasis of columns and curvature of what would ordinarily be straight lines is familiar to all students of architecture.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 08, August 1895 Fragments of Greek Detail] Reference

The exaggeration in the entasis of the archaic column disappears, its tapering was diminished, its height increased, and the overhang of the capitals reduced, till in the Theseion (465 B. C.) and the Parthenon (450-438 B. C.) we reach the final inimitable type.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Legacy of Greece Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield] Reference

This addition to the form of a truncated cone is the entasis.    From Wordnik.com.  [A History of Greek Art] Reference

In some early Doric temples, as the one at Assos in Asia Minor, there is no entasis.    From Wordnik.com.  [A History of Greek Art] Reference

Above them rise the columns, tapering gently as they ascend, but without any swell or entasis.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.] Reference

A column of the Parthenon, with its inclination, its tapering, its entasis, and its fluting, could not have been constructed without the most conscientious skill.    From Wordnik.com.  [A History of Greek Art] Reference

Peyton had opposed a laughing refusal, enforced by the presence of two fellow-architects, young men with lingering traces of the Beaux Arts in their costume and vocabulary, who stood about in Gavarni attitudes and dazzled the ladies by allusions to fenestration and entasis.    From Wordnik.com.  [Sanctuary] Reference

The belfry windows are generally found to consist of two semicircular-headed lights, divided by a kind of rude balluster shaft of peculiar character, the entasis of which is sometimes encircled with rude annulated mouldings; this shaft supports a plain oblong impost or abacus, which extends through the whole of the thickness of the wall, or nearly so, and from this one side of the arch of each light springs.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed.] Reference

"architectural refinements," for the teak trees they are made of are not absolutely straight, and they have an entasis that is quite natural where they taper away into the golden gloom of the sloping timber roofs.    From Wordnik.com.  [From Edinburgh to India & Burmah] Reference

˜entasis™), cognate with Latin˜ intendo™, ˜intentio™.    From Wordnik.com.  [Intentionality in Ancient Philosophy] Reference

9, etc., and which he claims was applied also to the entasis of columns.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Ten Books on Architecture] Reference