gorgerin

Etymology

Borrowed from French gorgerin.

noun

  1. (architecture) In some columns, that part of the capital between the termination of the shaft and the annulet of the echinus, or the space between two neck moldings; the hypotrachelium.
  2. (historical) Synonym of gorget (“armor”)
    It required each handgonner to wear a sleeved mail shirt, a gorgerin (armour protecting the throat and neck and made of mail or plate), a sallet (a type of helmet), and a breastplate. He also had to carry a dagger and sword. 2011, Sean McLachlan, Medieval Handgonnes: The first black powder infantry weapons, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 53
  3. Synonym of gorget (“wimple (clothing); necklace, neck-ornamentation”)
    She is almost naked; in the heat of the dance her veils have fallen away and her brocade robes slipped to the floor, so that now she is clad only in wrought metals and translucent gems. A gorgerin grips her waist like a corselet, and like an outsized clasp a wondrous jewel sparkles and flashes in the cleft between her breasts; lower down, a girdle encircles her hips, hiding the upper part of her thighs, […] 1959, Robert Baldwick, transl., Against Nature
    1992, R. W. Lightbown, Victoria and Albert Museum, Mediaeval European Jewellery: With a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum, Victoria & Albert Publications The gorgerette, or gorgerin, a collar or scarf or fichu whose original purpose had been to protect the neck or the neck and shoulders, was decorated quite early with gold mounts and jewels.
    […] an azure gorgerin already attached to her royal throat, her aigrettes on her head, crosses her courtyard, […] 2014, Marcel Proust, Edward H Ousselin, Pleasures and Days and "Memory" / Les Plaisirs Et Les Jours Et "Souvenir" Short Stories by Marcel Proust: A Dual-Language Book, Courier Corporation, page 205

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