Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small fagot.
  • noun In heraldry, a bearing always considered as one of the ordinaries, bounded by two horizontal lines drawn across the field which regularly contain between them one third of the escutcheon.

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

  • noun (heraldry) an ordinary consisting of a broad horizontal band across a shield

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • In another, two or three burning glasses, wherewith he made both men and women sometimes mad, and in the church put them quite out of countenance; for he said that there was but an antistrophe, or little more difference than of a literal inversion, between a woman folle a la messe and molle a la fesse, that is, foolish at the mass and of a pliant buttock.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • In another, two or three burning glasses, wherewith he made both men and women sometimes mad, and in the church put them quite out of countenance; for he said that there was but an antistrophe, or little more difference than of a literal inversion, between a woman folle a la messe and molle a la fesse, that is, foolish at the mass and of a pliant buttock.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • a woman folle a la messe and molle a la fesse, that is, foolish at the mass and of a pliant buttock.

    Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 2 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518

  • References: le cheval (m) = horse; Virgule = Comma; la fesse (f) = the bottom, backside; falling into the apples (tomber dans les pommes) = the French idiom for "fainting"

    cravacher - French Word-A-Day 2008

  • I did this by a type of two-step "twirl-scream" and, next I knew, I had spun out of the mosh pit (this, it turns out, with the help of several swift kicks in the fesse* by the aggravated "dancer" to my left).

    cravacher - French Word-A-Day 2008

  • References: le cheval (m) = horse; Virgule = Comma; la fesse (f) = the bottom, backside; falling into the apples (tomber dans les pommes) = the French idiom for "fainting"

    French Word-A-Day: 2008

  • I did this by a type of two-step "twirl-scream" and, next I knew, I had spun out of the mosh pit (this, it turns out, with the help of several swift kicks in the fesse* by the aggravated "dancer" to my left).

    French Word-A-Day: 2008

  • My cohorts and I decided that there really needed to be an anti-facebook, and they being french, we named it “fesse book”.

    The Nervous Breakdown 2010

  • References: le cheval (m) = horse; Virgule = Comma; la fesse (f) = the bottom, backside; falling into the apples (tomber dans les pommes) = the French idiom for "fainting"

    French Word-A-Day: 2008

  • I did this by a type of two-step "twirl-scream" and, next I knew, I had spun out of the mosh pit (this, it turns out, with the help of several swift kicks in the fesse* by the aggravated "dancer" to my left).

    French Word-A-Day: 2008

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