Word of the Day:
cartouche
What It Means
An ornamental figure, often on an oval shield.
An oval figure containing the characters of an important personal name, such as that of royal or divine people.
A decorative emblem on a globe or map.
Cartouche in Context
“In 1762, Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, a French priest who was a scholar of Eastern languages, had made the inspired guess that the cartouches set off words of great importance, such as the names of gods or rulers.”
Did You Know?
Borrowed from French cartouche, from Italian cartuccia, from carta, from Latin charta, from Ancient Greek χάρτης (khártēs). Doublet of cartridge.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cartouche (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “cartouche.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cartouche. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
