couchant

English

A lion couchant.

Etymology

From Middle English couchant, from Middle French couchant.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkaʊtʃənt/

Adjective

couchant (not comparable)

1. (of an animal) Lying with belly down and front legs extended; crouching.
   • 1801, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC:

     The dogs, with eager yelp, / Are struggling to be free; / The hawks in frequent stoop / Token their haste for flight; / And couchant on the saddle-bow, / With tranquil eyes, and talons sheath’d, / The ounce expects his liberty.

   • 1865, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “The Shipwreck”, in [Sophia Thoreau and William Ellery Channing], editors, Cape Cod, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 14:

     There were the tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel.

   • 1880, James Thomson, chapter XX, in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems, London: Reeves and Turner, […], →OCLC:

     Two figures faced each other, large, austere; / A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast, / An angel standing in the moonlight clear; […]

   • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:

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

2. (heraldry) Represented as crouching with the head raised.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

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

Derived terms

• couchant and levant
• counter-couchant
• levant and couchant

 

Translations

lying with belly down; crouching

• Russian: лежащий (ru) (ležaščij)

represented as crouching with the head raised

• Swedish: liggande (sv)

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ku.ʃɑ̃/

Noun

couchant m (plural couchants)

1. the setting sun
2. the sunset
3. the west
4. (literary) old age, decline, termination

Participle

couchant

1. present participle of coucher

Further reading

• “couchant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Middle English

Alternative forms

• cowchaunte

Etymology

From Middle French couchant, from Old French couchant.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkuːtʃant/

Noun

couchant

1. (rare) Lying down; couchant.
2. (rare) Displaying deference and humility.

Descendants

• English: couchant

References

• “cǒuchant, ppl.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-20.

Middle French

Verb

couchant (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)

1. present participle of coucher
2. (may be preceded by en, invariable) gerund of coucher

Adjective

couchant m (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)

1. lying down

Old French

Verb

couchant

1. present participle of couchier

Adjective

couchant m (oblique and nominative feminine singular couchant)

1. lying down