couchant

English

Etymology

From Middle French couchant.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /ˈkaʊtʃənt/

Adjective

couchant (not comparable)

1. (of an animal) Lying down; crouching.
   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, XX

     Two figures faced each other, large, austere;

     A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast,

     An angel standing in the moonlight clear;

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 91

     Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?

2. (heraldry) Represented as lying down with the head raised.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:

     His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould [...].

French

Verb form

couchant

1. present participle of coucher