| 释义 |
▪ I. coign, v.
Variant of coin v.2, quoin. Hence coigned pa. pple., furnished with coigns or corner-stones, quoined. coigning, furnishing with coigns; coigns collectively; quoining.
1801Coxe Tour Monmouth. I. 49 Built of rubble, but coigned with hewn stones. 1889Athenæum 3 Aug. 169/3 The Saxon coigning of ‘long and short work’, the towered arch with plain chamfered abaci.
▪ II. coign, n.|kɔɪn|
Also coigne.
[an archaic spelling of coin, quoin, q.v., retained chiefly in connexion with the phrase in 1.]
1. In the Shaksperian phrase coign of vantage: a position (properly a projecting corner) affording facility for observation or action. (The currency of the phrase is app. due to Sir Walter Scott.)
1605Shakes. Macb. i. vi. 7 No Iutty frieze, Buttrice, nor Coigne of Vantage, but this Bird Hath made his pendant Bed. 1818Scott Hrt. Midl. vi, As if the traders had occupied with nests..every buttress and coign of vantage, as the martlett did in Macbeth's Castle. 1823― Quentin D. xx, From some such turret or balcony-window, or similar ‘coign of vantage’. 1863Geo. Eliot Romola iii. xxxiii, A..swarming of the people at every coign of vantage. 1871Browning Pr. Hohenst. 1699 Terror on her vantage-coigne, Couchant supreme among the powers of air, Watches.
2. Occasionally used in the following senses, where quoin is the ordinary modern spelling:
a. A corner-stone; a projecting corner or angle of a building. (Cf. also coin 2).
1843R. Horne Orion, Great figures started from the roof And lofty coignes.
b. A wedge (in Printing or Gunnery).
1755Johnson, Coigne..2. A wooden wedge used by printers. [Bailey had coin, quine, quoine.] 1862Palmerston Sp. in Times 7 Mar. When the gun is elevated by coigns. 1867Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Coign. See Quoin.
†3. A frequent early spelling of coin 4–7 (rarely of coin 1).
4. Geol. An original angular elevation of land around which continental growth has taken place.
1899J. W. Gregory in Geogr. Jrnl. XIII. 245 South of the Scandinavian coign are the transverse east and western chains of the Alps and the Atlas. Note, The suggestion of the word ‘coign’ for ‘corner’ I owe to Mr. L. Fletcher... The term is suitable, as it is used for a printer's wedge as well as for the corner-stone of a house. |