tuille

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. An armor plate hanging down from the breastplate or fauld to cover the thigh, either below or as part of a tasse. (Possibly ahistorical, see etymology.)

Pronunciation

/twiːl/

Word forms

tuille tuilles

Etymology

From Middle English toile, from Anglo-Norman toille, tuille, taken to be variants of Old French tieulle (modern French tuile, from Latin tēgula, and thus a doublet of tile and tuile. The French term occurs in only one medieval work and the English term in only two (one a translation of the French work), where the interpretation of the term as referring to an armor plate is uncertain (words for cloth and weapons are spelled the same way and could have been meant instead). It has been suggested that the interpretation of the term as referring to an element of armor is an error by 1800s antiquarians.

Related words

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.