coign

English

Alternative forms

• coigne

Etymology

Variant of quoin.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɔɪn/
• Rhymes: -ɔɪn
• Homophones: coin, quoin

Noun

coign (plural coigns)

1. A projecting corner or angle; a cornerstone.
   • c. 1607–1608, William Shakeſpeare, The Late, And much admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: Imprinted at London for Henry Goſſon,  […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act III, Prologue]:

     By many a dern and painful perch
     Of Pericles the careful search
     By the four opposing coigns
     Which the world together joins,
     Is made with all due diligence

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:

     Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street.

   • 1936, William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!!:

     this snug monastic coign, this dreamy and heatless alcove of what we call the best of thought.

   • 1964, Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun:

     They lay quietly as the morning advanced its little way, hid snug in their greenwood coign. —

   • 1977, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane, →ISBN, page 212:

     The wall was intricately labored—lined and coigned and serried with regular and irregular groups of windows, balconies, buttresses ...

   • 2007, Stephen R. Donaldson, Fatal Revenant, →ISBN, page 3:

     In sunshine as vivid as revelation, Linden Avery knelt on the stone of a low-walled coign like a balcony high in the outward face of Revelstone's watchtower.

2. The keystone of an arch.
3. A wedge used in typesetting.
4. A a corner of a crystal formed by the intersection of three or more faces at a point (in crystallography)
   • 1922, Alfred Tutton, Crystallography and Practical Measurement:

     In both the orthogonal and clinographic projections the light rays joining the eye and crystal coigns (solid angles, corners at which three or more edges meet) are all parallel

   • 1948, George Hamilton, Herbert Cooke, Geology for South African Students:

     Axes taken from corner to corner ( coign to coign is the correct terminology ) in a cube are such …

5. An original angular elevation of land around which continental growth has taken place (in geology)
   • 1901, The American Geologist: A Monthly Journal of Geology and Allied Sciences:

     South of the North American coign we have again a pair of east - west mountain chains

Derived terms

• coign and livery
• coign of vantage

Anagrams

• incog

Middle English

Noun

coign

1. Alternative form of coyn (“coin, quoin”)