fleuron means an ornament or knob in the shape of a flower.
fleuron is pronounced /ˈflʊɹɑn/.
Why “fleuron” is a great word
A small, stylized ornamental flower, carved in stone, cast in metal, or printed on a page. From Middle French floron, from Old French flor ("flower") with the noun suffix -on; the spelling was later altered to fleuron to match modern French. Unlike a "floret," which denotes a botanical fact, or a "dingbat," which is a typographic catch-all, a fleuron is a deliberate act of cultivated beauty. It is the stone lily atop a Gothic finial, the gilded rosette fixed to a ceiling's center, the printer's crisp flower dividing chapters in a leather-bound book—a silent, spreading echo of the organic world, captured and perfected by human hands, beauty preserved not for life, but for the enduring hunger of the eye.
Etymology
From Old French floron (“flower”), spelling later changed to match modern French fleuron.
noun
- An ornament or knob in the shape of a flower
- The small decorative flower at the centre of each side of a Corinthian abacus; a flos.
- A decorative typographic element, used to separate passages or simply for decoration. Often doubled, e.g. 🙚 🙘 or 🙘🙚, or combined with other fleurons into a short line.e.g.“Fleurons include ❦, 🙐, 🙘, 🙠, 🙨, ☘, 🙬, 🕊, ✾, 𐡷, 𐫱.”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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