ogee arch detail illustration

What is an OGEE?

There are so many definitions, let’s investigate:

  1. “Oh Gee!” Words that you might blurt out if you see a dog driving a car.
  2. OG:  The Opera Ghost in the musical Phantom of the Opera
  3. OG: Original Gangster which you might call someone who is “old-school”
  4. OGEE: The excellent Scrabble word that is part of architecture vocabulary. It is a double-curved arc, used to shape mouldings or more easily seen in the shape of certain kinds of archs. The bright colors on this arch below are ogees. They are sort of very shallow “S” shapes, also called serpentines. These style of arches were often used in Gothic architecture.
illustration of an OGEE arch
an OGEE arch (see the serpentine shaped colored sections!)

Learn more about OGEEs at this Wikipedia page.