Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A belt, usually of ornamented leather, worn across the chest to support a sword or bugle.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A belt, or an ornament resembling a belt.
- n. In particular— A belt worn round the waist, as the Roman cingulum, or military belt.
- n. A jeweled ornament worn round the neck by both ladies and gentlemen in the sixteenth century.
- n. Figuratively, the zodiac.
- n. A belt worn over the right or left shoulder, crossing the body diagonally to the waist or below it, either simply as an ornament or to suspend a sword, dagger, or horn. Such belts, in medieval and Renaissance times, were sometimes richly decorated and garnished with bells, precious stones, etc.
- n. The leather thong or gear by which the clapper of a church-bell was formerly suspended.
- n. Also spelled baldrick.
Wiktionary
- n. A belt used to hold a sword, sometimes richly ornamented, worn diagonally from shoulder to hip.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A broad belt, sometimes richly ornamented, worn over one shoulder, across the breast, and under the opposite arm; it is used to support a sword or bugle by the left hip; less properly, any belt.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a wide (ornamented) belt worn over the right shoulder to support a sword or bugle by the left hip
Etymologies
- Middle English baudrik, from Old French baudre and from Middle High German balderich.
Examples
“Then they slept till daybreak, when the battle-drums beat to fight and the swords in baldric were dight; and war-cries were cried amain and all mounted their horses of generous strain and drew out into the field, filling every wide place and hill and plain.”
“Hung over her shoulder on a baldric was a hand weapon that looked like a pistol.”
“The baldric is a length of cloth or other material about eight inches wide, hanging down in front to about wrist length, draped over the left shoulder, around the back to waist level on the right, and over the left shoulder again to about knee-height in back, with the arms pinned to it just below the left shoulder.”
“He strode forward haughtily, taking his steps slowly with head thrown back, and as Frank gazed at him with heart throbbing painfully and heavily under the stress of his emotion, he could not help thinking how noble and fierce a warrior the Baggara looked, with his simple white robe, and how dangerous an enemy with the curved dagger in his girdle, and long, keen, crusader-like sword hanging from a kind of baldric from his right shoulder.”
“This man holds a staff of office and wears a beaded baldric over a buckskin jacket.”
“He had removed the heavy ceremonial Klingon baldric he normally wore over his Starfleet uniform, no doubt with the intention of moving with greater stealth through the jungle.”
Simon & Schuster: Star Trek: Typhon Pact Paths of Disharmony
“Looking like he was in the throes of committing himself to some last, grim deed, Richard pulled the baldric off over his head.”
“He slipped the baldric over his head, laying the leather across his shoulder and the scabbard at his hip.”
“Richard pulled the ancient, tooled-leather baldric, holding the gold-and-silverwrought scabbard and sword, off over his head and hung it on the stump of a branch sticking out of a log.”
“Richard slipped the baldric over his head, laying it over his right shoulder.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘baldric’.
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Archaic
abide, abjure, abroad, adamant, afield, aforetime, aghast, anon, apace, argent, assuage, aught and 327 more...
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Common English Words That Are Also First Names.
art, bob, bill, grace, hope, john, heather, pat, amber, jack, dale, glen and 170 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Blood Meridian: The Words
Words from Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"
argosy, ossuary, thaumaturge, devonian, ristras, chartvail, catafalque, suzerain, argonauts, unrectified, surbated, pyrolatrous and 84 more...
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Tolkien's archaisms
sigaldry, moot, kine, fey, eyot, ghylls, gangrel, glede, ilexes, laved, niggard, league and 44 more...
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Historical Costume Box
This is just sort of my "unsorted pit" of costumes to be organized later. It's a really broad topic, so right now, anything goes! Thanks for the contributions!
baldric, bliaut, coif, cote-hardie, farthingale, houppelande, partlet, tabard, kirtle, wimple, buskin, greatcoat and 33 more...
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