cresset

Old French crasset, cresset (“sort of lamp or torch”); perhaps of Old Dutch or Old High German origin, and akin to English cruse, French creuset (“crucible”).

cresset (plural cressets)

1. A metal cup, suspended from a pole and filled with burning pitch etc; once used as portable illumination.
   • Milton

     Starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed / With naphtha and asphaltus.

   • Wordsworth

     As a cresset true that darts its length / Of beamy lustre from a tower of strength.

2. (coopering) A small furnace or iron cage to hold fire for charring the inside of a cask, and making the staves flexible.
   • Dante

     We reached the lofty turret's base, our eyes / its height ascended, where we marked uphung / two cressets and another saw from far

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

• brazier

• Secrest, resects, secrets