Wikipedia

This text was copied from Wikipedia on 16 March 2024 at 5:11AM.

Escutcheon may refer to:

  • Escutcheon (heraldry), a shield or shield-shaped emblem, displaying a coat of arms
  • Escutcheon (furniture), a metal plate that surrounds a keyhole or lock cylinder on a door
  • (in medicine) the distribution of pubic hair
  • (in archaeology) decorated discs supporting the handles on hanging bowls
  • (in malacology) a depressed area, present in some bivalves behind the beaks in the dorsal line (about and behind the ligament, if external), in one or both valves, generally set off from the rest of the shell by a change in sculpture or colour.

5 Annotations

First Reading

cumgranosalis  •  Link

A nice L: word scutum for oblong shield not to be confused with scortum a prostitute:OED: 1. a. Her[aldic]. The shield or shield-shaped surface on which a coat of arms is depicted; also in wider sense, the shield with the armorial bearings; a sculptured or painted representation of this.
1480 Wardr. Acc. Edw. IV (1830) 131 Escochons of papir in colours of the armes of Lorde George Ver
1610 HOLLAND Camden's Brit. I. 405 Their Eschocheon Gules with sixe escallops argent.
b. fig.; esp. in phrases like a blot on an escutcheon = a stain on a person's reputation.
1697 DRYDEN Virgil (1806) II. 175 Ded., The banishment of Ovid was a blot in his escutcheon
2. A hatchment. (More fully funeral escutcheon.) Obs. a1672

d. Horticulture. A shield-shaped portion of a branch, containing a bud, cut for use as a graft.
1658 EVELYN Fr. Gard. (1675) 61 Cut your escutcheon long enough..that it may derive nourishment

e. Naut. (see quot.)
1867 SMYTH Sailor's Word-bk., Escutcheon, the compartment in the middle of the ship's stern, where her name is writ

cumgranosalis  •  Link

nice piece by Mary:Mon 18 Dec 2006,
pronunciation of 'escutcheon'

"Yes, the first syllable of this word is still pronounced in Standard Received English, though the vowel is a short 'i' rather than a short 'e'"

Samuel Jonhson's Dict.
"...Escutcheon n.s. The shield of the family : the picture of the ensigns armorial
Eschutcheon is a French word, from the Latin scutum, leather; and hence cometh our English word buckler, lere in the old Saxon signafying leathem and buck or bock abuck or stag; of whose skins , quilted close together with horn or hard wood, the ancient Britons made their shields. Peacham...." [ I fail to connect , but find interesting] [see Bacon Essays.]

cumgranosalis  •  Link

Errata :signafying leathem and buck or bock abuck
s/b
signifying leather, and buck or bock ,

Bradford  •  Link

Courtesy of Terry, here is Wikipedia's take on the matter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escu…

You will be happy to learn that "An inescutcheon is a smaller escutcheon borne within a larger escutcheon" (that'll stop 'em dead at the Scrabble tournament), and that "An escutcheon is also used in bathroom plumbing. It is the chrome plate behind a knob on a shower's temperature and water flow control." And to think poor Pepys never could have known that!

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

In heraldry, an escutcheon (/ᵻˈskʌtʃən/) is a shield that forms the main or focal element in an achievement of arms. The word escutcheon is derived from Middle English escochon, from Anglo-Norman escuchon, from Vulgar Latin scūtiōn-, from Latin scūtum, "shield". From its use in heraldry, escutcheon can be a metaphor for a family's honour. The idiom "a blot on the escutcheon" is used to mean a stain on somebody's reputation. Escutcheon shapes are derived from actual shields used by knights in combat, and thus have varied and developed by region and by era. As this shape has been regarded as a war-like device appropriate to men only, British ladies customarily bear their arms upon a lozenge, or diamond-shape, while clergymen and ladies in continental Europe bear theirs on a cartouche, or oval. The lozenge has for many centuries been particularly associated with certain females as a vehicle for the display of their coats of arms, instead of the escutcheon or shield, which is in its origin an object of manly warfare. The lozenge shape of quasi-escutcheon is also used for funerary hatchments for both men and women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esc…

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1663