Sconce

/skɒns/ · noun

Meaning

A fixture for a light, which holds it and provides a screen against wind or against a naked flame or lightbulb..

Definitions by Sense

1. A fixture for a light, which holds it and provides a screen against wind or against a naked flame or lightbulb.
2. A head or a skull.
3. A poll tax; a mulct or fine.
4. (Oxford University slang) An act of sconcing; very similar to a fine at Cambridge University, though a sconce is the act of issuing a penalty rather than the penalty itself.
5. (obsolete) To impose a fine, a forfeit, or a mulct.
6. (Oxford University slang) During a meal or as part of a drinking game, to announce some (usually outrageous) deed such that anyone who has done it must drink; similar to I have never; commonly associated with crewdates; very similar to fining at Cambridge University.
7. A type of small fort or other fortification, especially as built to defend a pass or ford.
8. (obsolete) A hut for protection and shelter; a stall.

Example Sentences

[…]tapers put into lanterns or sconces of several-coloured, oiled paper, that the wind might not annoy them.

Golden sconces hang not on the walls.

There wasn't a room that had not been clad, picture-railed, dadoed, panelled, stained, gilded, bordered and generally made over to within an inch of its life - can I interest anyone in a gold cherubic sconce?

Novv as I am a Chriſtian anſvver me, / In vvhat ſafe place you haue beſtovv'd my monie; / Or I ſhall breake that merrie ſconce of yours / That ſtands on tricks, vvhen I am vndiſpos'd: / VVhere is the thouſand Markes thou hadſt of me?

Why does he suffer this rude knave now, to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?

Long time this sconce a helmet wore, / But sickness smites the conscience sore; / He broke his sword, and hither bore / His gear and plunder, / Took to the cowl,—then rav’d and swore / At his damn’d blunder!

[…] roll the rider and his horse in the dust, or endeavour to drive their lance through the bars of the visor into the bull's eye of their friend's sconce, […]

[…]; an old blue jacket, that at one time had been a coat, looped over a red plush “singlet” of perhaps twenty or even forty years' wear : his almost hairless sconce bared to the sun, from which it had received an imperishable coating of tan, he was an object that few would pass without hailing with observations,[…] he wiped his shining sconce [...] and raised his visor […]

Synonyms for sconce

Antonyms for sconce

Related Words

Word Forms

• sconces
• sconcing
• sconced
• skonce

Usage Notes

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