couchant

From Middle English couchant, from Middle French couchant.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkaʊtʃənt/

couchant (not comparable)

1. (of an animal) Lying with belly down and front legs extended; crouching.
   • 1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter I. "The Shipwreck", page 14.

     There were the tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel.

   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, XX

     Two figures faced each other, large, austere;

     A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast,

     An angel standing in the moonlight clear;

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 91

     Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?

2. (heraldry) Represented as crouching with the head raised.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:

     His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould [...].

• IPA^(key): /ku.ʃɑ̃/

couchant

1. present participle of coucher

• cowchaunte

From Middle French couchant, from Old French couchant.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkuːtʃant/

couchant

1. (rare) Lying down; couchant.
2. (rare) Displaying deference and humility.

• English: couchant

• “cǒuchant (ppl.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-20.

couchant (plural couchans)

1. present participle of coucher

couchant m (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)

1. lying down

couchant

1. present participle of couchier

couchant m (oblique and nominative feminine singular couchant)

1. lying down