coign

• coigne

Variant of coigne, a borrowing of Old French coigne (“wedge, cornerstone, die for stamping”), from Latin cuneus (“wedge”). See also quoin (“cornerstone”)

• IPA^(key): /kɔɪn/

coign (plural coigns)

1. A projecting corner or angle; a cornerstone.
   • c. 1608, William Shakespeare, Pericles, Act III, Prologue,

     By many a dern and painful perch

     Of Pericles the careful search

     By the four opposing coigns

     Which the world together joins,

     Is made with all due diligence

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses

     Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street.

   • 1936, William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!!

     this snug monastic coign, this dreamy and heatless alcove of what we call the best of thought.

   • 1964, Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun

     They lay quietly as the morning advanced its little way, hid snug in their greenwood coign. —

   • 1977, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane, →ISBN, page 212:

     The wall was intricately labored—lined and coigned and serried with regular and irregular groups of windows, balconies, buttresses ...

   • 2007, Stephen R. Donaldson, Fatal Revenant, →ISBN, page 3:

     In sunshine as vivid as revelation, Linden Avery knelt on the stone of a low-walled coign like a balcony high in the outward face of Revelstone's watchtower.

2. The keystone of an arch.
3. A wedge used in typesetting.

• coign of vantage

• incog

coign

1. Alternative form of coyn (“coin, quoin”)