1A small disc, especially a decorative medallion.

1. 1.1 A picture or pattern contained in a circle.
   the calendar is painted with roundels of the Labours of the Months

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Particular highlights include an extraordinarily beautiful large French panel, c.1500 depicting Charles VIII, and an extremely rare French thirteenth-century roundel depicting the execution of John the Baptist.
   • The example shown is ornamented with concentric bands of decoration around a group of folk dancers in the central roundel.
   • The frame acquired the architectural elements of its churchlike structure: columns, cornices, arches and traceries, buttresses, ornate roundels like rose windows.
   • Each of the six windows features the image of a plant mentioned in the Bible, along with a memorial statement and two roundels containing painted symbols representing the Gospels.
   • The various shapes signify representatives of the animal kingdom; the square signifies the earthly reality of the four elements and our world; while the eight roundels suggest the heavenly bodies.
   • The portrait circumscribes the subject: in showing usually only the head and shoulders in an oval or a roundel, the miniature constitutes a reduction from life-size to miniature and from the whole body to a part.
   • One of the stars of the collection is the Diana and Minerva commode of 1773, so called for the inlaid roundels representing the goddesses of the hunt and the arts, respectively.
   • St Ambrose and St Augustine appear in roundels above.
   • Around the border is a series of panels and roundels with birds and animals amidst scrolling foliage and with a coat of arms.
   • In the Doric frieze above, six of the roundels decorating the metopes display figural reliefs that are very hard to decipher in the gloom into which the door is plunged by the barrel vault above.
   • The upper roundels with resting warriors represent Peace, flanked by a figure of Justice.
   • The roundels in the center show a doge kneeling before an enthroned Saint Mark and a seated, robed figure with the right hand raised, presumably in blessing.
   • A double broken gable was placed atop displaying the festooned Chigi mountains and crowned by their star enclosed in a roundel.
   • On either side, the Crescent Rainbow arch would have roundels containing ‘sculptured scenes’ from The Thousand and One Nights.
   • The inscription in the roundel indicates that the movement was made after Godshalk moved to Philadelphia about 1763 or 1764 from Towamencin, a town just outside the city.
   • His most notable acquisitions include a jade flask belonging to Clive of India, and a newly rediscovered renaissance Mantuan roundel of Vulcan and Venus.
2. 1.2Heraldry A plain filled circle as a charge (often with a special name according to colour).
   Example sentencesExamples

   • It bears the shield of Mexico City within a crowned roundel and a Spanish legend that can be translated, ‘On His Accession to the Throne of Mexico City on December 27, 1789.’
   • The film actually showed the colours of the roundel, which were unmistakably British, the unique undercarriage design of the Harrier, its name - Harrier - and its serial number.
3. 1.3 A circular identifying mark painted on military aircraft, as, for example, the red, white, and blue of the RAF.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • Still in a light shade of blue, SL721 now had revised roundels and repositioned initials.
   • The most telling and haunting part of the wreck is the Royal Australian Air Force roundel that has faded with time and was torn in half during a salvage attempt.
   • I leave her on a military passenger plane, complete with turquoise and white roundels, piloted by a uniformed officer.
   • ‘I think the big Air Force roundels on the wings look quite spectacular and that came from the Air Force design,’ he said.
   • On 5 May, they flew six of the transports, now bearing the tricolored roundels of the French Air Force, to Gia Lam airbase outside Hanoi.

2A short poem consisting of three stanzas of three lines each, rhyming alternately, with the opening words repeated as a refrain after the first and third stanzas. The form, a variant of the rondeau, was developed by Swinburne.