Word of the Day:
puncheon
What It Means
A figured stamp, die, or punch, used by goldsmiths, cutlers, etc.
A short, upright piece of timber in framing; a short post; an intermediate stud.
A piece of roughly dressed timber with one face finished flat (by either hewing or sawing).
Puncheon in Context
“he chose to regard [his father] with a lowering and suspicious mien, unless it were in the dead hours of the night, when he developed a morbid craving to be trotted back and forth and up and down the puncheon floor [...].”
Did You Know?
From Middle English punchoun, from Anglo-Norman ponchon, pounceon et al., and Middle French ponçon, poinchon et al., from Old French ponchon, from Latin pūnctiōnem (“act of piercing”). Doublet of punction. Related to Middle High German punze (“chisel; burin, graver”), ponze (“puncheon, standardized cask”), German Punze (“puncheon, punch, counter”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: puncheon (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: “puncheon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/puncheon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
