SG Heritage Dictionary

Portal [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. In architecture, a little gate, where there are two gates of different dimensions.

2. A little square corner of a room, separated from the rest by a wainscot, and forming a short passage into a room.

3. A kind of arch of joiner's work before a door.

4. A gate; an opening for entrance; as the portals of heaven.

Portal [Adjective] Webster's Dictionary 1913

Of or pertaining to a porta, especially the porta of the liver; as, the portal vein, which enters the liver at the porta, and divides into capillaries after the manner of an artery.

Portal [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. A door or gate; hence, a way of entrance or exit, especially one that is grand and imposing.

2. The lesser gate, where there are two of different dimensions.

3. Formerly, a small square corner in a room separated from the rest of the apartment by wainscoting, forming a short passage to another apartment.

4. By analogy with the French portail, used by recent writers for the whole architectural composition which surrounds and includes the doorways and porches of a church.

5. The space, at one end, between opposite trusses when these are terminated by inclined braces.

6. A prayer book or breviary; a portass.

Portalis Encyclopedia Britannica

PORTALIS, JeanÉtienne Marie (1745-1807), French jurist and the principal author of the Code Civil, which as the Code Napoléon has been declared the greatest monument of the reign of the emperor, came of a bourgeois family, and was born at Bausset in Provence on 1st April 1745. He was educated by the Oratorians at their schools in Toulon and Marseilles, and then went to the university of Aix; while a student there he published his first two works, Observations sur Émile in 1763 and Des Préjugés in 1764. In 1765 he became an avocat at the parlement of Aix, and soon obtained so great a reputation that he was instructed by Choiseul in 1770 to draw up the decree authorizing the marriage of Protestants. From 1778 to 1781 he was one of the four assessors or administrators of Provence, and in 1783 he brought about the countess of Mirabeau’s separation from her husband in spite of the impassioned pleading of the great Mirabeau himself. In 1788 he protested on behalf of the avocats of Aix against Loménie de Brienne’s May edicts, but in the following year, probably owing to Mirabeau’s influence, he was not elected to the States-General. He entirely disapproved of the great changes brought about by the Constituent Assembly; and, after refusing to be one of the royal commission for splitting up Provence into departments, he retired, first to his country house and then to Lyons, and took no further part in politics. In November 1793, after the republic had been proclaimed, he came to Paris, and was thrown into prison, being the brother-in-law of Siméon, who was the leader of the federalists in Provence. He was soon removed through the influence of Barere to a maison de santé, where he remained undisturbed till the fall of Robespierre. On being released he practised as a ...

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 19, p. 526
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