{"id":16358,"date":"2006-01-29T21:48:52","date_gmt":"2006-01-30T05:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2006\/01\/29\/coign.html"},"modified":"2006-01-29T21:48:52","modified_gmt":"2006-01-30T05:48:52","slug":"coign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2006\/01\/29\/coign\/","title":{"rendered":"coign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote>\n<p>[...] he had wedged himself in the coign of a double-stemmed meshwood trunk[...]<\/p>\n<p>--<cite>On<\/cite>, by Adam Roberts, p. 225 of the 2002 Gollancz paperback edition<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This one looks even more familiar than the last one; and even if I didn't know what it meant before, I could get a decent idea from context. So I almost didn't list it, but then I saw that MW3 lists it as a variant spelling for \"quoin,\" which I didn't think I'd ever seen, and which means \"angle\" or \"corner.\"  It can also refer to a wedge, a keystone (or a \"voussoir\" (!)), or a lozenge (in the sense of a cut gem facet). Or the bricks (or other pieces) that make up the exterior corner where two walls meet; and actually, the illustration for that looks familiar, so maybe I've seen \"quoin\" before after all.<\/p>\n<p>So that's interesting, but even more interesting is that MW3 lists two different entries for \"coign\"; the other says that it's derived from \"coin,\" which turns out to be an archaic term for \"corner\" or \"cornerstone\" (from Middle French <span class=\"foreign\">coin<\/span> meaning \"wedge,\" \"stamp,\" or \"corner\"). And \"quoin\" derives from \"coin.\"<\/p>\n<p>Also showing up when I searched in MW3 for these words were phrases like \"canting quoin\" (also \"canting coin\"): \"a triangular block for steadying stowed casks in a ship.\" And \"coign of vantage\": \"a position advantageous for action or observation.\"<\/p>\n<p>And in fact if you look up \"coign\" in MW11 (abridged), the <em>only<\/em> entry that comes up is \"coign of vantage.\" So I guess the spelling \"coign\" is at least somewhat obscure after all.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&#8230;] he had wedged himself in the coign of a double-stemmed meshwood trunk[&#8230;] &#8211;On, by Adam Roberts, p. 225 of the 2002 Gollancz paperback edition This one looks even&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-new-to-me-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}