Talk:cleché

Meaning

Interestingly, I see some disagreement about this, with some sources saying it means ≈"(of a cross) having its ends flare out in a shape resembling the bow of an old-fashioned key", and that the idea it means ≈"voided" is an error resulting from some prominent crosses cleché(s) happening to also be voided. Several reference works (though old ones, which may be outdated) do define it as ≈"voided", including Webster, whose illustration is a cross voided and unflared, though he also has a weird monosyllabic pronunciation for it:

refs defining it as voided

• 1855, Pierre Adolphe Cheruel, Dictionnaire historique des institutions, moeurs et coutumes de la France par A. Chéruel, page 155:

  CLÉCHÉ.- En termes de blason cléché se dit d’une pièce ouverte de manière à laisser voir le champ de l’écu.

  (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• 1880, Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language ... Thoroughly Rev. and Greatly Enlarged and Improved by C.A. Goodrich and Noah Porter ... with an Appendix of Useful Tables ... Also a New Pronouncing Biographical Dictionary, page 238:

  ̶Clēche (kleech), n. [Fr. cléché: croix cléchée); Lat. clavis, key. (Her.) A kind of cross, charged with another cross of the same figure, but of the colour of the field. Craig. [Image of a cross with unflared, pencil-pointed ends, voided.]

• 1897, Robert Hunter, Charles Morris, Universal Dictionary of the English Language: A New and Original Work Presenting for Convenient Reference the Orthography, Pronunciation, Meaning, Use, Origin and Development of Every Word in the English Language ..., page 1047:

  clê´-c̣hê (I), s. [Fr. cléché, croix cléchée, from Lat. clavis a key.] Her.: A kind of cross, charged with a similar cross of the same figure, but of the colour of the field.
  cleche (2), s. [CLUTCH.] A claw, a talon.

On the other hand, some reference works do say the term specifies a flaring shape (though some also include being voided or charged with the field):

refs saying it's flaring

• 1983, Charles Boutell, Boutell's Heraldry, Frederick Warne Publishers, page 50:

  POINTE : having the ends of the limbs so treated; Sable, a cross pointed, in the dexter chief a molet argent - Graveley (120). If the ends are slightly splayed as well as pointed, this form may be termed cleché or urdé (455). [This number corresponds to an illustration of a cross with pointed ends, but the lack of colour in the image makes it impossible to tell whether the cross is also voided or not.]

• 1866, Hugh Clark, An Introduction to Heraldry ... Eighteenth edition. Revised and corrected by J. R. Planché, page 108:

  CLECHÉ, or CLECHÉE, a French term, applied to any ordinary which is so completely perforated, that its edges only are visible.
  CLECHÉ, A Cross (voided and pometté), is one which spreads from the centre towards the extremities, then ends in an angle in the middle of the extremity, by lines drawn from the two points that make the breadth till they join. Pl. xxxvii., n. 17. [This is an image of a cross which has both flared ends and voiding.]

(Less clear is this.) I'll see if I can find old blazons with illustrations which might clarify. (Wikipedia's illustration, File:Coat of arms of Occitania.svg, seems heraldically incorrect (the field is wrong, making the field and the cross upon it the same colour, a violation of the rule of tincture); more plausible is this version.) - -sche (discuss) 18:17, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Further information: w:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#cléché. - -sche (discuss) 04:23, 10 January 2023 (UTC)