Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A belt, usually of ornamented leather, worn over a shoulder to support a sword or bugle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A belt, or an ornament resembling a belt.
  • noun In particular— A belt worn round the waist, as the Roman cingulum, or military belt.
  • noun A jeweled ornament worn round the neck by both ladies and gentlemen in the sixteenth century.
  • noun Figuratively, the zodiac.
  • noun 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.
  • noun The leather thong or gear by which the clapper of a church-bell was formerly suspended.
  • noun Also spelled baldrick.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun 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.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A belt used to hold a sword, sometimes richly ornamented, worn diagonally from shoulder to hip.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a wide (ornamented) belt worn over the right shoulder to support a sword or bugle by the left hip

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English baudrik, from Old French baudre and from Middle High German balderich.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French baldre (Modern French baudrier) , probably from Latin balteus ("belt").

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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.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Hung over her shoulder on a baldric was a hand weapon that looked like a pistol.

    The Abode of Life Lee Correy 1990

  • Hung over her shoulder on a baldric was a hand weapon that looked like a pistol.

    The Abode of Life Lee Correy 1990

  • Hung over her shoulder on a baldric was a hand weapon that looked like a pistol.

    The Abode of Life Lee Correy 1990

  • 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.

    Concordance A Terran Empire concordance Ann Wilson

  • 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.

    In the Mahdi's Grasp George Manville Fenn 1870

  • This man holds a staff of office and wears a beaded baldric over a buckskin jacket.

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • 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.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact Paths of Disharmony Dayton Ward 2011

  • This man holds a staff of office and wears a beaded baldric over a buckskin jacket.

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • This man holds a staff of office and wears a beaded baldric over a buckskin jacket.

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

Comments

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  • Captain Picard wanted Worf to straighten this when he arrived for his shift.

    June 18, 2012

  • "Jesus glided out of the dark with underwater fluency; he was resplendent in a short crimson gown, a large velvet hat trimmed with lynx, a golden girdle around his waist, and a golden baldric trailing behind."

    - Margery Kempe by Robert Glück (though I came across it quoted by Danielle Dutton in Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other)

    August 8, 2024