couchant
English
Etymology
From Middle English couchant, from Middle French couchant.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈkaʊtʃənt/
Adjective
couchant (not comparable)
- (of an animal) Lying with belly down and front legs extended; crouching.
- 1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter I. "The Shipwreck", page 14.
- There were the tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel.
- 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, XX
- Two figures faced each other, large, austere;
- A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast,
- An angel standing in the moonlight clear;
- 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 91
- Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?
- 1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter I. "The Shipwreck", page 14.
- (heraldry) Represented as crouching with the head raised.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:
- His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould [...].
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:
Middle English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle French couchant, from Old French couchant.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈkuːtʃant/
Descendants
- English: couchant
References
- “cǒuchant (ppl.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-20.
Middle French
Adjective
couchant m (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)
Old French
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