mortar

Dictionary: mor·tar (môr'tər) pronunciation

A vessel in which substances are crushed or ground with a pestle.
A machine in which materials are ground and blended or crushed.
1. A portable, muzzleloading cannon used to fire shells at low velocities, short ranges, and high trajectories.
2. Any of several similar devices, such as one that shoots life lines across a stretch of water.
Any of various bonding materials used in masonry, surfacing, and plastering, especially a plastic mixture of cement or lime, sand, and water that hardens in place and is used to bind together bricks or stones.

tr.v., -tared, -tar·ing, -tars.

To bombard with mortar shells.
To plaster or join with mortar.

[Middle English morter, from Old English mortere and from Old French mortier, both from Latin mortārium.]

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: mortar

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Material used in building construction to bond brick, stone, tile, or concrete blocks into a structure. The ancient Romans are credited with its invention. Mortar consists of sand mixed with cement and water. The resulting substance must be sufficiently flexible to flow slightly but not collapse under the weight of the masonry units. Before the 19th-century invention of portland cement, masons used thin joints of lime mortar, which required greater precision than the thicker joints of portland-cement mortar and were not as strong. For tilework, a very thin mortar called grout is used. Pointing is the process of finishing a masonry joint.

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Sci-Tech Encyclopedia: Mortar

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A binding agent used in construction of clay brick, concrete masonry, and natural stone masonry walls and, to much less extent, landscape pavements. Modern mortars are improved versions of the lime and sand mixtures historically used in building masonry walls. See also Brick; Masonry.

Masonry mortar is composed of one or more cementitious materials, such as masonry cement or portland cement and lime, clean sand, and sufficient water to produce a plastic, workable mixture.

Mortars are closely related to concrete but, like grout, generally do not contain coarse aggregate. Mortars function with the same calcium silicate-based chemistry as concrete and grouts, bonding with masonry units into a contiguous, weatherproof surface in the process. Masonry cement or portland cement-lime mortars can be formulated to address job-specific requirements including setting time, rate of hardening, water retentivity, and extended workability. See also Cement; Concrete; Grout; Lime (industry).

Architecture and Landscaping: mortar

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Plastic material to bond stones and bricks together. Before C20 it was usually made from crushed burnt limestone mixed with sand and water, often with additional brick- or stone-dust. Today, Portland cement is used with sand and water, sometimes with lime or other additives.

Bibliography

Nicholson (1835)
W.Papworth (1852)
Sturgis et al. (1901–2)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Archaeology Dictionary: mortar

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[Ma]

A fairly deep bowl-like vessel, usually of stone but sometimes of wood or metal, used in conjunction with the pestle for crushing foodstuffs by placing them in the mortar and pounding them with the pestle.

Columbia Encyclopedia: mortar

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in building
in warfare

mortar, in building, mixture of lime or cement with sand and water, used as a bedding and adhesive between adjacent pieces of stone, brick, or other material in masonry construction. Lime mortar, a common variety, consists usually of one volume of well-slaked lime to three or four volumes of sand, thoroughly mixed with sufficient water to make a uniform paste easily handled on a trowel. Lime mortar hardens by absorption of carbon dioxide from the air. Once universally used, lime mortar is now less important because it does not have the property of setting underwater and because of its comparatively low strength. It has largely been supplanted by cement mortar, commonly made of one volume of Portland cement to two or three volumes of sand, usually with a quantity of lime paste added to give a more workable mix. Cement mortar, besides having a high strength, generally equal to that of brick itself, has the very great advantage of setting or hardening underwater. Other varieties include gauge mortar, for rapid setting, composed of plaster of Paris used either pure or combined with lime or with lime and sand, and grout, a thin liquid mixture of lime or cement, poured into masonry to fill up small interstices. Primitive mortars took various forms: in early Egypt, Nile mud was used as an adhesive; the Mesopotamians used bitumen (the slime mentioned in Genesis) or sometimes a mixture of clay, water, and chopped straw, to cement together their unbaked bricks; Greeks of the Mycenaean era probably employed a soft bituminous clay. The advanced Greek buildings are notable for their construction without mortar, the huge blocks of stone being consummately fitted with dry beds. The Romans likewise used little mortar in cut stonework or vaulting but in later periods bedded the rough stone of their mass masonry in strong cement mortar. In medieval times and in all periods since, mortar of some sort has been almost universally used in masonry construction.

mortar, in warfare, term originally applied to certain types of artillery with high trajectories, but later applied to an infantry weapon that consists of a tube supported by a bipod that fires a projectile at a very high trajectory. The mortar is not usually classified as artillery. Unlike standard types of artillery, mortars need no complex recoil equipment and are usually smoothbore and muzzle-loaded. Their weight is light in relation to the weight of shell delivered, but at the expense of range and accuracy. First developed by Sir Frederick Stokes during World War I, the mortar was used by infantry in trench warfare and is standard equipment in modern armies.

Veterinary Dictionary: mortar

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1. wooden or ceramic vessel with a rounded internal surface, used with a pestle, for reducing a solid to a powder or producing a homogeneous mixture of solids.
2. a material used to cement bricks in place.

m. licking — a form of pica usually ascribed to a nutritional deficiency of calcium.

Marine Corps Dictionary: Mortar

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An ancient field weapon that fires a projectile in a high arch to reach an impact point.

Military Dictionary: mortar

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(DOD) A muzzle-loading, indirect fire weapon with either a rifled or smooth bore. It usually has a shorter range than a howitzer, employs a higher angle of fire, and has a tube with a length of 10 to 20 calibers. See also gun; howitzer.

Wikipedia: Mortar

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Look up mortar in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Mortar has several meanings:

Mortar (weapon) fires shells at a much lower velocity and higher ballistic arc than other ordnance.
Mortar (masonry), material used in masonry to fill the gaps between blocks and bind them together.
Mortar (firestop), hydraulic cementitious material used to firestop through-penetrations in wall and floor assemblies required to have a fire-resistance rating.
Mortar and pestle, a vessel and implement used to crush or grind materials.
Mortarboard, a flattened type of headwear normally worn as part of academic dress.

		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Sci-Tech Encyclopedia. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Architecture and Landscaping. A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Copyright © 1999, 2006 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Archaeology Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Veterinary Dictionary. Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary 3rd Edition. Copyright © 2007 by D.C. Blood, V.P. Studdert and C.C. Gay, Elsevier. All rights reserved. Read more
		Marine Corps Dictionary. Copyright © 2003 "Unofficial Dictionary for Marines" compiled and edited by Glenn B. Knight Read more
		Military Dictionary. US Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Words, 2003. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mortar". Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

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