cuirass. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

cuirass

SYLLABICATION:	cui·rass
PRONUNCIATION:	kw-rs
NOUN:	1a. A piece of armor for protecting the breast and back. b. The breastplate alone. 2. A defense or protection: “A carefully primped irony, that cuirass of art in the early Eighties, is necessary—a distance so affected as to constitute a hopeless impediment to feeling” (Robert Hughes). 3. Zoology A protective covering of bony plates or scales.
TRANSITIVE VERB:	Inflected forms: cui·rassed, cui·rass·ing, cui·rass·es To protect with a cuirass.
ETYMOLOGY:	Middle English curas, from Old French curasse, probably alteration (influenced by Old French cuir, leather) of Old Provençal coirassa, from Late Latin coricea (vestis), leather (garment), feminine of coriceus, from Latin corium, hide. See sker-¹ in Appendix I.


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.