lozenge

Borrowed from Old French losenge (“rhombus”), from Old French *lose (“flag-stone”), from Vulgar Latin *lausa, from Gaulish *lausā, from Proto-Celtic *lausā (“stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *leh₁w- (“stone”). Cognate with Spanish losa (“square tile”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈlɒzɪndʒ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈlɑzɪndʒ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

lozenge (plural lozenges)

1. (shapes) (heraldry) A quadrilateral with sides of equal length (rhombus), having two acute and two obtuse angles.
   • 1658, Sir Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus, Folio Society 2007, p. 167:

     Wherein the decussis is made within a longilaterall square, with opposite angles, acute and obtuse at the intersection; and so upon progression making a Rhombus or Lozenge figuration [...].

   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vani8ty Fair, Chapter 9:

     How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling to the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman!

   • 2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society 2011, p. 14:

     The floor is constructed from marble lozenges and triangles of every imaginable hue: yellow and pink and all manner of mottled and blotched shades, framed in white.

2. A small tablet (originally diamond-shaped) or medicated sweet used to ease a sore throat.
   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 3, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”  He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.

• (quadrilateral): diamond (informal), rhomb, rhombus (most common in mathematics)
• (medicated sweet): pastille, throat pastille, troche

lozenge (third-person singular simple present lozenges, present participle lozenging, simple past and past participle lozenged)

1. (transitive) To form into the shape of a lozenge.
2. (transitive) To mark or emblazon with a lozenge.