cheville
See also: chevillé
English edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from French cheville. Doublet of clavicle.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
cheville (plural chevilles)
- (poetry) A word or phrase whose only function is to make a sentence metrically balanced.
- 1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Art of Writing:
- The genius of prose rejects the cheville no less emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, I should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike a balance in the sound.
- 1910, Patrick Weston Joyce, English as we speak it in Ireland, chapter 5:
- The practice of using chevilles was very common in old Irish poetry, and a bad practice it was; for many a good poem is quite spoiled by the constant and wearisome recurrence of these chevilles.
French edit
Etymology edit
Inherited from Old French cheville, from Vulgar Latin *cavicla, dissimilated and syncopated form of Classical Latin clāvicula, diminutive of clāvis (“key”). Doublet of clavicule, a borrowing.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
cheville f (plural chevilles)
Derived terms edit
Related terms edit
Further reading edit
- “cheville”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Old French edit
Alternative forms edit
- kevile (Northern)
Etymology edit
From Vulgar Latin *cāvicla < *cāvicula, from Classical Latin clāvicula, diminutive of clāvis (“key”).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
cheville oblique singular, f (oblique plural chevilles, nominative singular cheville, nominative plural chevilles)
- ankle (anatomy)