Friday, April 15, 2011

Words used to describe a heraldic cross...

A very important set of words to study if you're a scrabble player, right up there with paper sizes, tropical shrubs, and hmm, what other categories am I missing? None of the words listed take an S as they are all adjectives. 

AVELLAN having the four arms shaped like filberts (knew this one for some reason)

BOTONEE/ BOTONNEE having arms ending in a trefoil (this looks familiar, but I may be thinking of GOBONEE)

FITCHY having the arms ending in a point (didn't know this one, but it's a fun six, like the others)

FLEURY having the arms terminating in three leaves (like above, I think. knew this because it's a local lumberyard name here)

FORMEE having the arms narrow at the center and expanding towards the ends (keep reading, I'm going to list some other cool -MEE words)

FOURCHEE having the end of each arm forked (learned this long ago, before some top 1000 7 letter words. go figure.)

MOLINE having arms forked and curved at the ends (with an S you have LOMEINS)

POMMEE having arms with knoblike ends (other -MEE words: RAMEE, MAMMEE, and....LARYNGECTOMEE???)

 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

All these heraldic terms ending in the French '...ee' are commonly Anglicised by substituting a y. So formee becomes formy, pattee becomes patty, and so on. The only problem I have with this is that people I play with refuse to allow me to use words taken from heraldic blazon as they consider it cheating. I am an heraldic artist, so know blazon intimately, giving me an unfair advantage in their opinion. If you do use blazon, though, there are hundreds of words open to you, mostly based on Norman French. Many have two or three spellings, as well, adding hugely to your lexicon.