Word.ws English Dictionary

per chief

per chief adverb: partitioned into two parts by a horizontal line one-third of the way down the shield. A shield of this form is now normally viewed as one colour charged with a chief instead, although this may cause it to break the rule of tincture.

per chief: partitioned into two parts by a horizontal line one-third of the way down the shield. A shield of...
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Adverb

per chief (not comparable)

  1. (nonstandard) Partitioned into two parts by a horizontal line one-third of the way down the shield. A shield of this form is now normally viewed as one colour charged with a chief instead, although this may cause it to break the rule of tincture.
    • Party per chief, gules and or, are the Arms of Camoyse.1845, Edward Smedley, Hugh James Rose, Henry John Rose, Encyclopaedia Metropolitana: Mixed sciences, page 602
    • [...] which Anne bore parted per chief azure and vert, three martlets or, in the first a crescent az. for difference, but by her he had no issue.1882, William Wheater, The history of the parishes of Sherburn and Cawood, page 175

Examples of per chief in a sentence

  • Per chief gules and sable, a lion rampant ermine (argent billetty sable).1897, William Kirkpatrick Riland Bedford, The Blazon of Episcopacy: Being the Arms Borne by Or Attributed to the Archbishops and Bishops of...
  • Cromwell of Tattershall : party per chief, gules and argent, a bend azure; which might also be blazoned as gules, a chief argent, and a bend azure (fig. 16).1903, Day Otis Kellogg, Thomas Spencer Baynes, The Encyclopædia Britannica: A-ZYM, page 694:
  • Per chief gules and azure, over all a lion rampant or Hastang Robert G. 162 QI . 123 ....1984, Cecil R. Humphery-Smith, Anglo-Norman Armory Two: An Ordinary of Thirteenth-century Armorials:

Questions about per chief

What does per chief mean?
Per chief means partitioned into two parts by a horizontal line one-third of the way down the shield. A shield of this form is now normally viewed as one colour charged with a chief instead, although this may cause it to break the rule of tincture.
How do you use per chief in a sentence?
Per chief gules and sable, a lion rampant ermine (argent billetty sable).
What part of speech is per chief?
Per chief is an adverb.

Words near per chief in the dictionary

  1. per capita
  2. per cent
  3. per cent.
  4. per centum
  5. per chevron
  6. per chief
  7. per contra
  8. per curiam
  9. per diem
  10. per diems
  11. per fess

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: per chief (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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