Dictionary

coign en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /kɔɪn/

Etymology

Variant of quoin.

Meanings

1. A projecting corner or angle; a cornerstone.
   • The wall was intricately labored—lined and coigned and serried with regular and irregular groups of windows, balconies, buttresses ... 1977, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane, →ISBN, page 212:
   • They lay quietly as the morning advanced its little way, hid snug in their greenwood coign. — 1964, Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun:
   • By many a dern and painful perch Of Pericles the careful search By the four opposing coigns Which the world together joins, Is made with all due diligence c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry Gosson, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act III, prologue]:
   • Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:
   • this snug monastic coign, this dreamy and heatless alcove of what we call the best of thought. 1936, William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!!:
   • In sunshine as vivid as revelation, Linden Avery knelt on the stone of a low-walled coign like a balcony high in the outward face of Revelstone's watchtower. 2007, Stephen R. Donaldson, Fatal Revenant, →ISBN, page 3:
2. The keystone of an arch.
3. A wedge used in typesetting.
4. A a corner of a crystal formed by the intersection of three or more faces at a point (in crystallography)
   • Axes taken from corner to corner ( coign to coign is the correct terminology ) in a cube are such … 1948, George Hamilton, Herbert Cooke, Geology for South African Students:
   • In both the orthogonal and clinographic projections the light rays joining the eye and crystal coigns (solid angles, corners at which three or more edges meet) are all parallel 1922, Alfred Tutton, Crystallography and Practical Measurement:
5. An original angular elevation of land around which continental growth has taken place (in geology)
   • South of the North American coign we have again a pair of east - west mountain chains 1901, The American Geologist: A Monthly Journal of Geology and Allied Sciences:

Forms

Deriveds

coign and livery · coign of vantage

coign en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /kɔɪn/

Etymology

Variant of quoin.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To furnish with coigns.
   • The angles were always coigned, and the arches turned with squared stone, brought from Caen in Normandy […] 1773, The Antiquities of England and Wales, volume 1, Francis Grose, page 7:

Forms