bla·zon

(blā′zən)

tr.v. bla·zoned, bla·zon·ing, bla·zons

1. Heraldry

a. To describe (a coat of arms) in proper terms.

b. To paint or depict (a coat of arms) with accurate detail.

2. To adorn or embellish with or as if with a coat of arms: "the stars and moons and suns blazoned on that sacred wall" (G.K. Chesterton).

3. To proclaim widely.

1. Heraldry

a. A coat of arms.

b. The description or representation of a coat of arms.

2. An ostentatious display.

[Probably from Middle English blasoun, shield, from Old French blason.]

bla′zon·er n.

bla′zon·ment n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Mentioned in

blazon

References in periodicals archive

Just moments after her brothers present a disquieting image of her liver and blood, the Duchess reappropriates their language to describe a model of interpersonal relations in which the agency of flesh and fluid transforms the blazoned and blazoner. The Duchess seeks to regulate the ebb and flow of Antonio's body, specifically aiming to dilute his blood and initiate an exchange of spirits.

How to Do Things with Organs: Moving Parts in The Duchess of Malfi

Vickers shows the ubiquity of woodcuts used in these books; one, presenting the painter Zeuxis collating the best parts of the world's most beautiful females on canvas to portray Helen of Troy, moved from Du Pre's 1531 edition of The Romance of the Rose to Sergent's Hecatomphile and then to his 1541 edition of Controverses des sexes masculins et feminins, but not before it appeared in the new Les blasons domestiques published in 1539 by Gilles Corrozet--who used the woodcut to blast its earlier users in a moral castigation titled "Against the blazoners of body parts." This, in a book that now contained praises of home furnishings!

Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture

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