coign

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Variant of quoin.

Pronunciation

Noun

coign (plural coigns)[1][2]

  1. A projecting corner or angle; a cornerstone.
    • c. 1607–1608, William Shakeſpeare, The Late, And much admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. , London: Imprinted at London for Henry Goſſon,  , published 1609, →OCLC, [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.
  4. A a corner of a crystal formed by the intersection of three or more faces at a point (in crystallography)
    • 1922, Alfred Tutton, Crystallography and Practical Measurement:
      In both the orthogonal and clinographic projections the light rays joining the eye and crystal coigns (solid angles, corners at which three or more edges meet) are all parallel
    • 1948, George Hamilton, Herbert Cooke, Geology for South African Students:
      Axes taken from corner to corner ( coign to coign is the correct terminology ) in a cube are such …
  5. An original angular elevation of land around which continental growth has taken place (in geology)
    • 1901, The American Geologist: A Monthly Journal of Geology and Allied Sciences:
      South of the North American coign we have again a pair of east - west mountain chains

Derived terms

References

  1. ^ Coign at Oxford English Dictionary
  2. ^ Coign at Merriam-Webster

Anagrams

Middle English

Noun

coign

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

References

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