Stage - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

STAGE (Fr. etage; from Lat. stare, to stand), in architecture, an elevated floor, particularly the various storeys of a bell-tower, &c. The term is also applied to the plain parts of buttresses between cap and cap where they set back, or where they are divided by horizontal strings and panelling. It is used, too, by William of Worcester to describe the compartments of windows between transom and transom, in contradistinction to the word bay, which signifies a division between mullion and mullion (see Storey). From the sense of the floor or platform on which plays were acted the term came to signify both the theatre and the drama (q.v.). And from its etymological meaning of a station comes the sense of a place for rest on a journey, the distance between such places, &c.