wainscot - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English waynscot, from Middle Low German wagenschot or Middle Dutch waghenscote, assumed to be from wagen (“wagon”) (from Old Saxon wagan) + schot, meaning “partition, crossbar," which is from or related to skiotan (“to shoot”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈweɪnskɒt/
• (obsolete) IPA(key): /ˈwɛnskət/, /ˈweɪnskət/[1][2]

wainscot (plural wainscots)

Wainscot

The Common Wainscot (Mythimna pallens), a noctuid moth

1. (architecture) An area of wooden (especially oaken) panelling on the lower part of a room’s walls.
   • 1598, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 3, scene 3:
     […] this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber, warp, warp.
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 11:
     Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.
2. Any of various noctuid moths.

• panelling (uncountable)

• wainscot veneer

wainscot (third-person singular simple present wainscots, present participle wainscoting or wainscotting, simple past and past participle wainscoted or wainscotted)

1. To decorate a wall with a wainscot.

2. ^ Jespersen, Otto (1909), A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (Sammlung germanischer Elementar- und Handbücher; 9)‎[1], volume I: Sounds and Spellings, London: George Allen & Unwin, published 1961, § 4.412, page 128.

3. ^ Ross, Alan S. C. (1954), “Linguistic Class Indicators in Present-Day English”, in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen‎[2], volume 55, number 1, Helsinki: Modern Language Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 41.