couched

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of couch.

   The criticism was couched in such careful language that nobody took offense.

   He couched his refusal in terms of regret rather than anger.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty as past tense and past participle, the regular -ed form of couch. Because couch is both transitive and intransitive, the participle can describe someone who has lain down to rest or something set in place: a lance couched for the charge has been lowered into attack position. Keep it apart from the heraldic adjective, which describes which way a chevron runs.

2. 2
   adjective

   Of a chevron in heraldry, issuing from the side of the shield rather than from its bottom or top.

   The blazon called for a chevron couched from the dexter flank.

   On the older banner the chevron is couched, emerging from the shield's edge rather than its base.

   Note

   A blazon word that follows its noun, as blazon words usually do. Alexander Nisbet's A System of Heraldry (1722) gives the arms of Tourney as "Or, a Cheveron couched Gules." Couched on its own means the chevron springs from one side. Add sinister when it comes from the other side, as in "three chevronels couched sinister" in Gough and Parker's Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry (1894). Couché is the same term in its French form.

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