vair
/vɛː
/noun [mass noun]
1Fur obtained from a variety of red squirrel, used in the 13th and 14th centuries as a trimming or lining for garments.On special feasts, the knights would bestow many robes of vair, for which reason courtiers and jugglers from Lombardy and all of Italy were drawn to Florence, where they were welcomed....
- It was ordained that no ecclesiastic, but dignified clergymen, should wear vair, gray, or ermine.
- One morning this maidservant, with a basket of cabbage greens, passed by Bito who, beforehand, had thought to dress in his finest robes of rich vair.
2 Heraldry Fur represented by interlocking rows of shield-shaped or bell-shaped figures which are typically alternately blue and white, as a tincture.The height of a row of vair is not strictly specified, but is typically about one-fifth that of the shield....
- The white and blue bell-shapes of vair usually form the equivalent of a chequerboard pattern.
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from Latin varius (see various).
- four-dimensional
- four-door
- Fourdrinier machine
- four-engined
- Fourex
- four-eyed
- four-eyed fish
- four-eyes
- four flush
- four-flusher
- fourfold
- four-four time
- four freedoms
- four-handed
- four hundred
- Fourier analysis
- Fourierism
- Fourierist
- Fourier, Joseph
- Fourier series
- Fourier transform
- four-in-hand
- four-leaf clover
- four-leaved clover
- four-legged friend