crocket
Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
- noun A projecting ornament, usually in the form of a cusp or curling leaf, placed along outer angles of pinnacles and gables.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- noun A large roll or lock of hair, characteristic of a manner of dressing the hair common in the fourteenth century. It consisted of a stiff roll, probably made over a piece of stuff, like the “rats” worn by women during the nineteenth century.
- noun One of the terminal snags on a stag's horn.
- noun In medieval architecture, a pointed decoration, an ornament most frequently treated as recurved foliage, placed on the angles of the inclined sides of pinnacles, canopies, gables, and other members, and on the outer or convex part of the curve of a pastoral staff or other decorative work. Sometimes crockets were carved in the forms of animals.
Examples
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She could barely see the king for the blaze of diamonds on his buckles and buttons and hat crocket.
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Hardly a year passed without something falling down; sometimes a piece of a pinnacle, sometimes a crocket or other ornament, sometimes a shaft.
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Next came the most delicate moment of all, for with a less certain grip on the crocket I had to kick a second hole lower down, and transfer my hand-hold from the stone to the wooden lath laid bare by my first kicks.
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I am told that it was a bad few moments for the lookers-on when they saw me lower myself sideways from my crocket and begin to hammer on the slates with my toes: for at first they did not comprehend, and then they reasoned that the slates were new, and if I failed to kick through them, to pull myself back to the crocket again would be a desperate job.
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I sat astride the topmost crocket, and glancing down between my boot heels, spied the carriage with its pair of greys flattened upon the roadway just beyond the verge of the battlements, and Mr. Scougall himself dancing and waving his arms like a small but very lively beetle.
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This bursts out, young and irresponsible, in pinnacle, crocket, and gable, in towers like spears, and in the eager lancet windows which peer upwards out of
Earthwork out of Tuscany Being Impressions and Translations of Maurice Hewlett
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The statues are there, but are modern, of the namby-pamby school, and of the original tomb possibly a crocket and a cusp may remain.
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It reminded me (with differences) of the way one climbs the spire at Strasburg, and stands upon that temple's final crocket, with nothing but a lightning conductor to steady swimming senses.
Note
The word 'crocket' comes from a French word meaning 'little hook'.
