Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Couchant
1.
Lying down with head erect; squatting.
2.
(Her.)
Lying down with the head raised, which distinguishes the posture of couchant from that of dormant, or sleeping; – said of a lion or other beast.
Couchant and levant
(Law)
, rising up and lying down; – said of beasts, and indicating that they have been long enough on land, not belonging to their owner, to lie down and rise up to feed, – such time being held to include a day and night at the least.
Blackstone.
Webster 1828 Edition
Couchant
COUCHANT
,Adj.
Levant and couchant, in law, rising up and lying down; applied to beasts, and indicating that they have been long enough on land to lie down and rise up to feed, or one night at least.
Definition 2024
couchant
couchant
English
Adjective
couchant (not comparable)
- (of an animal) Lying down; crouching.
- 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, XX
- Two figures faced each other, large, austere;
- A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast,
- An angel standing in the moonlight clear;
- 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 91
- Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?
- 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, XX
- (heraldry) Represented as lying down with the head raised.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:
- His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould [...].
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:
Translations
represented as lying down with the head raised
Middle French
Verb
couchant (plural couchans)
- present participle of coucher
Adjective
couchant m (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)
Old French
Verb
couchant
- present participle of couchier
Adjective
couchant m (oblique and nominative feminine singular couchant)