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.
- 1801, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], OCLC 277545047:
- The dogs, with eager yelp, / Are struggling to be free; / The hawks in frequent stoop / Token their haste for flight; / And couchant on the saddle-bow, / With tranquil eyes, and talons sheath’d, / The ounce expects his liberty.
- 1865, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “The Shipwreck”, in [Sophia Thoreau and William Ellery Channing], editors, Cape Cod, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, OCLC 2278570, 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.
- 1880, James Thomson, chapter XX, in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems, London: Reeves and Turner, […], OCLC 492031197:
- Two figures faced each other, large, austere; / A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast, / An angel standing in the moonlight clear; […]
- 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, OCLC 19736994; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, OCLC 258624721:
- Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?
-
- (heraldry) Represented as crouching with the head raised.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:
- His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould […]
-
Derived terms
- couchant and levant
- counter-couchant
- levant and couchant
Translations
lying with belly down; crouching
|
represented as crouching with the head raised
|
French
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ku.ʃɑ̃/
Noun
couchant m (plural couchants)
- the setting sun
- the sunset
- the west
- (literary) old age, decline, termination
Participle
couchant
- present participle of coucher
Further reading
- “couchant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Middle English
Alternative forms
- cowchaunte
Etymology
From Middle French couchant, from Old French couchant.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈkuːtʃant/
Noun
couchant
- (rare) Lying down; couchant.
- (rare) Displaying deference and humility.
Descendants
- English: couchant
References
- “cǒuchant, ppl.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-20.
Middle French
Verb
couchant (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)
- present participle of coucher
- (may be preceded by en, invariable) gerund of coucher
Adjective
couchant m (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)
- lying down
Old French
Verb
couchant
- present participle of couchier
Adjective
couchant m (oblique and nominative feminine singular couchant)
- lying down