saltant

English

Azure, a deer saltant argent (arms of Vilaller).

Etymology

Latin saltans, present participle of saltare (“to dance”), v. intens. from salire (“to leap”): compare French sautant. See sally (verb).

Adjective

saltant (not comparable)

1. Leaping; jumping; dancing.
2. (heraldry) In a leaping position; springing forward; salient.
   • 1808, The Critical Review, Or, Annals of Literature, page 91:

     Why the devil, can you deny that you've not a partiality for cats, ha! ha! ha! [...] the feline species is preserved - the crest is very evident a kitten saltant, ha! heh! heh!

   • 1867, The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakspere: Comedies, page 41:

     "The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old coat." This speech is an heraldric puzzle. It is pretty clear that "the dozen white luces" apply to the arms of the Lucy family. [...] Since our first edition we have received an ingeniuous explanation from a correspondant, "A Lover of Heraldry." "The arms of the Lucies (not quartered by the Duke of Northumberland) are gules, three lucies hauriant, argent. [...] 'The salt fis (i.e. the fish or luce saltant) is an old coat.' Without taking it as a strict and formed adjective, I think in Shallow's mouth the salt luces may well mean the saltant lucies."

   • 1893, Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological and Natural History Society, page 43:

     Two lions saltant as vis-a-vis, but reversed, one with head up, the other down.

   • 1905, Ferdinand Justi, Sara Yorke Stevenson, Morris Jastrow (Jr.), Central and eastern Asia in antiquity, page 91:

     The issue at the bottom is decorated by two lions saltant.

   • 1925, The Publications of the Harleian Society, page 78:

     Crest a squerrill saltant gules upon a rugged staffe party per fece gold and vert the leaues counterchanged, sett upon a wreath siluer and Sable, the mantletts gules doubled siluer, Botoned gold as it appeareth in ye margent.

Further reading

• “saltant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Catalan

Verb

saltant

1. gerund of saltar

Latin

Verb

saltant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of saltō