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chevron

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Chevron

English

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A black double chevron
An example of a chevron on a shield (sense 2).
Painted chevron striping on Fisherman's Church in Germany.

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *kápros
Proto-Italic *kapros
Latin caper
Latin *capreus
Vulgar Latin *capriō
Old French chevronbor.
Middle English cheveroun
English chevron

    From Middle English cheveroun, from Old French chevron, the mark so called because it looks like rafters of a shallow roof, from Vulgar Latin *capriō, from Latin caper (“goat”), the likely connection between goats and rafters being the animal's horns.

    Pronunciation

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    Noun

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    chevron (plural chevrons)

    1. A V-shaped pattern; used in architecture, and as an insignia of military or police rank, on the sleeve.
      1. (heraldry) A wide inverted V placed on a shield.
        Coordinate terms: chevronel, couple-close
      2. (by extension) Anything V-shaped similarly to the classic chevron shape.
        • 2019, Steve Burrows, A Dance of Cranes: A Birder Murder Mystery‎[1], Oneworld Publications:
          Jejeune's canoe sent a chevron of silver ripples scurrying across the mirror-calm surface as it carved its path through the dark water.
    2. (collective) A group of birds in flight, when flying in a V formation, as in cranes, ducks, geese, gulls, pelicans and swans.
      Synonym: wedge
      • 2013, Budd Titlow, Bird Brains‎[2], Globe Pequot, page 29:
        As I stood in amaze-ment, chevron after chevron after chevron of these massive birds crisscrossed the sky, practically blocking out the sun and creating an unparalleled cacophony of sight and sound.
        refers to sandhill cranes
      • 1928 October, Kendrick Kimball, “Injun Summer Calms”, in Field and Stream‎[3], CBS Publications, page 82:
        And then we observed what caused us to rub our eyes wonderingly-a chevron of geese gliding directly for the tip of the point.
      • 2007, Robert Fripp, Power of a Woman‎[4], Rosetta Solutions, page 169:
        That was the first chevron of geese to pass this way.
      • 2015, Phil Cousineau, The Book of Roads: Travel Stories from Michigan to Marrakech‎[5], Viva Editions:
        A chevron of seagulls passes overhead, wings perfectly still.
      • 2025, Bill Arnott, A Perfect Day for a Walk: The History, Cultures, and Communities of Vancouver, on Foot‎[6], Arsenal Pulp Press:
        A chevron of ducks flies high overhead.
    3. (chiefly UK) One of the V-shaped markings on the surface of roads used to indicate minimum distances between vehicles.
      • 2009, Jamie Dunn, Truckie has a point, Sunshine Coast Daily Online, June 13, 2009.
        I told you that in fact they were called chevrons and it was an exercise by the transport department to teach us to stay two chevrons behind the car in front.
    4. A wedge-shaped sediment deposit observed on coastlines and continental interiors around the world.
    5. Synonym of arrowhead (“horse jump obstacle”).
    6. Any of various symbols.
      1. A guillemet, either of the punctuation marks “«” or “»”, used in several languages to indicate passages of speech. Similar to typical quotation marks used in the English language such as ““” and “””.
      2. An angle bracket, either used as a typographic or a scientific symbol.
      3. (informal) A háček, a diacritical mark that may resemble an inverted circumflex.
        • 1953, William James Entwistle, Aspects of Language, Faber and Faber, page 107:
          It is pertinent to remember, however, that one of the greatest phoneticians, Jan Hus, used diacritics (in the form of points, which have later become chevrons in his own language), and that his alphabet is the most satisfactory for eastern Europe, since it has been officially adopted by the languages which use the Latin script.
        • 1976, Stephen J. Lieberman, The Sumerian Loanwords in Old-Babylonian Akkadian (Harvard Semitic Studies, issue 22; published by Scholars Press for Harvard Semitic Museum), page 66
          The symbol ř (“r” with a chevron) is used for a phoneme which sounds like Czech ř (as in Dvořák), i.e. a voiced alveolar flap. The presence of the chevron has no effect on the index numbers used in transliteration; cf. 2.058.

    Usage notes

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    • In heraldry, broken chevrons are represented and described in blazon in a variety of ways: see examples at rompu.

    Synonyms

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    Derived terms

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    Translations

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    See also

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    Further reading

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    Verb

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    chevron (third-person singular simple present chevrons, present participle chevroning, simple past and past participle chevroned)

    1. To form or be formed into chevrons
      • 1963, Lucien Victor Gewiss, "Process and Devices for Chevroning Pliable Sheet Material," US Patent 3397261 [7], page 14:
        ...the sheet to be chevroned locks itself into the furrow.
      • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow:
        ... as a thick finger with a gob of very slippery jelly or cream comes sliding down the crack now towards his asshole, chevroning the hairs along like topo lines up a river valley...
      • 1983, Allen Sillitoe, The Lost Flying Boat, →ISBN, page 118:
        Bull fixed the claw under a batten, strained like a sailor at the capstan, shirt off, arms chevroned by elaborate tattoos.
      • 2003, Felice Picano, A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay, →ISBN, page 55:
        Earlier, in glaring winter daylight, i'd first noticed thin lines chevroning off the edge of each eye into the taut skin of his cheeks...

    Anagrams

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    French

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    Etymology

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      Inherited from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *capriōnem, from *capreus, cf. also caprone. Ultimately from Latin caper (“goat”).

      Pronunciation

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      Noun

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      chevron m (plural chevrons)

      1. rafter
      2. (heraldry) chevron
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      Descendants

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      • → English: chevron
      • → Russian: шевро́н (ševrón)

      Further reading

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