A GLOSSARY OF THE PRINCIPAL HERALDIC TERMS USED IN THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS.
Reading edition
Affrontée, full-faced and fronting.
Argent, silver or white.
Azure, blue.
Badge, see p. 15.
Besant, a Byzantine coin, represented in Heraldry as a round flat piece of gold, without impress.
Blazon, the proper technical description of armorial bearings.
Charge, an heraldic bearing or emblem.
Chequy, a shield divided by horizontal and perpendicular lines into equal square spaces, alternately tinctured.
Chevron, a charge resembling the rafters of a house.
Colours, azure, gules, vert, sable, or purpure.
Couchant, an animal lying down.
Couped, the head or limb of any animal cut off by an even line.
Crest, see p. 15.
Dexter, the right hand.
Escutcheon, a shield of arms.
Escalop, a fan-shell, the pilgrim’s badge.
Fess, a broad horizontal bar across the centre of a shield.
Fess dancetté, an indented or zig-zag fess.
Field, the ground or surface of the shield.
Guardant, full-faced.
Gules, red.
Impaled, side by side on the same shield.
Issuant, coming out of.
Lozengy, a shield divided by transverse diagonal lines into equal lozenge-shaped spaces.
Metals, or (gold) and argent (silver).
Or, gold.
Ordinaries, certain common heraldic charges, such as the fess, the pale, the chevron, &c.
Pale, a broad perpendicular bar down the centre of the shield.
Passant, an animal walking past.
Proper, of natural colour.
Quartered, or quarterly, a shield divided into four quarters.
Reguardant, looking back.
Sable, black.
Saltire, a broad cross of St. Andrew on the shield.
Sejant, seated.
Sinister, left hand.
Statant, standing.
Supporters, animals which support the shield (see p. 14).
Vert, green.
Volant, flying.