SCONCE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Sconce

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noun

Sconce n.

A fortification, or work for defense; a fort. "No sconce or fortress of his raising was ever known either to have been forced, or yielded up, or quitted."

A hut for protection and shelter; a stall. "One that... must raise a sconce by the highway and sell switches."

A piece of armor for the head; headpiece; helmet. "I must get a sconce for my head."

Fig.: The head; the skull; also, brains; sense; discretion. (Colloq.) "To knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel."

A poll tax; a mulct or fine.

A protection for a light; a lantern or cased support for a candle; hence, a fixed hanging or projecting candlestick. "Tapers put into lanterns or sconces of several-colored, oiled paper, that the wind might not annoy them." "Golden sconces hang not on the walls."

Hence, the circular tube, with a brim, in a candlestick, into which the candle is inserted.

(Arch.) A squinch.

A fragment of a floe of ice.

10.

A fixed seat or shelf. (Prov. Eng.)

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Etymology of 'Sconce'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sconce" Quotes from Famous Books

... the door fastened against the return of the fugitive, at the old woman's command, though I felt sure in my own mind that the man would never come back again of his own accord, Sandie and I took the battered sconce and dying wick and went up to the ...

— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... littered with papers, two big easy-chairs, a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by way of ornament, a very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it—a red cloth with a black key border—all these things made part of a whole that told of a life reduced to its simplest terms. A triple candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled the vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau's long wanderings; a huge sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the bed-foot; and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and scarlet border was suspended by large rings from ...

— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... despite of the maxim, cherished by all true knights, that 'fair play is a jewel,' hastened to take advantage of the hero's fall; but, as he stooped to give a fatal blow, Peter Stuyvesant dealt him a thwack over the sconce with his wooden leg, which set a chime of bells ringing triple bob-majors in his cerebellum. The bewildered Swede staggered with the blow, and the wary Peter seizing a pocket-pistol, which lay hard by, discharged ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... he went to school, It was the rule (Though 'twas hard to say he was really a fool) To send him at once, So thick was his sconce, To the block that was kept for the ...

— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... order to counteract similar enterprises in future, now erected a sconce, which they called Fort Teligny; upon the ruptured dyke of Borght, directly in front of the Borght blockhouse, belonging to the Spaniards, and just opposite Fort Hoboken. Here, in this narrow passage, close under the walls of Antwerp, where friends ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... night but a few feet removed from the eager crowd without, his hands lightly clasped together between his knees, and the expression on his face of one whose thoughts were far away. A candle stuck in a tin sconce on the wall flickered as the night wind blew freshly through a broken pane of the window. Its uncertain light revealed a low room whose cloth ceiling was stained and ragged, and from whose boarded walls the torn paper hung in strips; a lumber-room ...

— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

Words linked to "Sconce" : fortress, earthwork, shelter, bracket, light