coign means A projecting corner or angle; a cornerstone. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 84 out of 100.
coign is pronounced /kɔɪn/.
Why “coign” is a great word
An external projecting corner or angle of a building, particularly one that serves as a foundational cornerstone or keystone. From an earlier spelling of 'quoin', itself from Middle French 'coin' ("corner, wedge, stamp for coining"), from Latin 'cuneus' ("wedge"). Unlike "quoin" (the builder's prosaic term) or "corner" (a universal, unmarked intersection), "coign" is a word preserved in amber, its use now confined almost entirely to the literary formulation "coign of vantage." It is the high, jutting stone from which a sentinel surveys a kingdom, the solid, squared beginning from which an entire edifice is measured, the weathered granite lip of a balcony overlooking a square—the fixed point from which the world is observed and judged.
Etymology
Variant of quoin.
noun
- A projecting corner or angle; a cornerstone.“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”
- The keystone of an arch.
- A wedge used in typesetting.
- A a corner of a crystal formed by the intersection of three or more faces at a point (in crystallography)“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”
- 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”
verb
- To furnish with coigns.“The angles were always coigned, and the arches turned with squared stone, brought from Caen in Normandy […]”
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