Jamb
side-post or lining of a doorway or other aperture
In architecture, a jamb (from French jambe 'leg'), is the side-post or lining of a doorway or other aperture. The jambs of a window outside the frame are called reveals. Small shafts to doors and windows with caps and bases are called jamb-shafts; when in the inside arris of the jamb of a window, they are sometimes called scoinsons.
A doorjamb, door jamb, or sometimes doorpost is the vertical portion of the door frame onto which a door is secured. The jamb bears the weight of the door through its hinges, and most types of door latches and deadbolts extend into a recess in the doorjamb when engaged, making the accuracy of the plumb (i.e. true vertical) and strength of the doorjambs vitally important to the overall operational durability and security of the door.
The word jamb is also used to describe a wing of a building, perhaps just in Scottish architecture. John Adam added a 'jamb' to the old Leith Customs house in the Citadel of Leith in 1754–1755.
In arches and vaults, the soffit is the curved inner surface of the arch or vault located above the impost, as opposed to the outer surface called the arch or vault crest.
The public source identifies “Jamb” as side-post or lining of a doorway or other aperture. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jamb, side-post and lining.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Jamb”, the useful work is to connect “side-post or lining of a doorway or other aperture” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2743417. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1754 and 1755.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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This entry incorporates text from “Jamb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.