Definitions

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

  • noun A short ornamental drapery for the top of a window or door or the edge of a shelf.
  • noun A heavy protective cloth worn over a helmet in medieval times.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A piece of textile fabric, leather, or the like, hanging by one of its edges, and typically having the opposite edge dagged, slitted, scalloped, or otherwise cut in an ornamental manner: used in several ways.
  • noun In decorative art, painting on a surface more or less imitating or resembling a lambrequin, as in some Chinese vases, in which the upper part of the body is covered by solid decoration having a lower edge of jagged or ornamented outline.
  • noun In heraldry, the mantelet, represented as floating from the helmet, and often forming an important part of the ornamental decoration of the achievement.

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

  • noun A kind of pendent scarf or covering attached to the helmet, to protect it from wet or heat.
  • noun A leather flap hanging from a cuirass.
  • noun A piece of ornament drapery or short decorative hanging, pendent from a shelf or from the casing above a window, hiding the curtain fixtures, or the like.

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

  • noun A short decorative drapery for a shelf edge or for the top of a window casing; a valance.
  • noun An ornamental hanging over upper part of window or along the edge of a shelf.
  • noun A border pattern with draped effect used in ceramics.
  • noun A covering for a helmet.
  • noun In heraldry, drapery attached to a helmet.

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

  • noun short and decorative hanging for a shelf edge or top of a window casing
  • noun a scarf that covers a knight's helmet

Etymologies

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

[French, probably from Dutch *lamperkijn, diminutive of Middle Dutch lamper, veil.]

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Examples

  • Look now at the magnificent "lambrequin" of sweet peas, which drapes the window and almost hides the box in which they grow.

    Gardening by Myself 1872

  • In one of the upper rooms can be seen a mantel with a lambrequin on it and a clock stopped at twenty minutes after five.

    The Johnstown Horror!!! or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin James Herbert Walker

  • The seat pads and lambrequin over window are of deep red velvet.

    The Art of Interior Decoration Grace Wood

  • In pillows which break the long back line of a couch, in cornice moldings, lambrequin bottoms, chair backs, screens, etc., they lend life.

    How to Prepare and Serve a Meal; and Interior Decoration Lillian B. Lansdown

  • All would have been well but for the seductions of a certain ice-cream parlor where candy, apples and cigars were temptingly displayed in a window, draped genteely with a fly-specked lace lambrequin.

    Chicken Little Jane Lily Munsell Ritchie

  • "Bet she just thinks she beat us all," she thought as she laid her bonnet on the sitting-room sofa, where she had felt of the pillows, and the lambrequin which hung from the long shelf where the clock and vasts stood, on the opposite side of the room.

    The Wind Before the Dawn Dell H. Munger

  • She was leaving her husband; what was more grievous to her, she was leaving her home; she was on the streets of New York, with her small savings in her greasy purse -- clasped tightly in her two hands under her "Sunday cape," that was trimmed with fringe and tassels in a way to remind you of a lambrequin.

    McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 Various

  • A curtain, preferably of some dark color, should be hung on each side, and a lambrequin or valance across the top.

    Entertainments for Home, Church and School Frederica Seeger

  • She glanced at the red lambrequin over the nearest window.

    The Trail of the Hawk A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life Sinclair Lewis 1918

  • His lambrequin mustache -- relic of a forgotten Anglomania -- had been profoundly black, but now, like his smooth hair, it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode.

    The Turmoil 1915

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  • What stores use in the windows to display their best wool sweaters.

    April 5, 2009

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    May 21, 2011