cheville

Borrowed from French cheville. Doublet of clavicle.

cheville (plural chevilles)

1. (poetry) A word or phrase whose only function is to make a sentence metrically balanced.
   • 1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Art of Writing

     The genius of prose rejects the cheville no less emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, I should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike a balance in the sound.

   • 1910, Patrick Weston Joyce, English as we speak it in Ireland, chapter 5

     The practice of using chevilles was very common in old Irish poetry, and a bad practice it was; for many a good poem is quite spoiled by the constant and wearisome recurrence of these chevilles.

From Old French cheville, from Vulgar Latin *cavicla, dissimilated and syncopated form of Classical Latin clāvicula, diminutive of clāvis (“key”). Doublet of clavicule, a borrowing.

• IPA^(key): /ʃə.vij/

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cheville f (plural chevilles)

1. ankle
2. dowel, peg
3. wall plug
4. (poetry) cheville

• avoir les chevilles qui enflent
• chevillette
• en cheville

• clé

• “cheville” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

From Vulgar Latin *cāvicla < *cāvicula, from Classical Latin clāvicula, diminutive of clāvis (“key”).

cheville f (oblique plural chevilles, nominative singular cheville, nominative plural chevilles)

1. ankle (anatomy)

• clef

• French: cheville