cresset

See also: Cresset

English

Illustration of a cresset

Etymology

From Middle English cresset, from Old French crasset, cresset (“sort of lamp or torch”); perhaps of Old Dutch or Old High German origin, and akin to English cruse and/or French creuset (“crucible”), the latter being from Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin *croceolus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹɛsɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

Noun

cresset (plural cressets)

1. A metal cage, basket or cup with fire in it, used for various purposes:
   1. (chiefly historical) A metal cup, suspended from or attached to the top of a pole and filled with burning pitch etc., used as portable illumination.
      • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:

        Starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed / With naphtha and asphaltus.

      • 1835, William Wordsworth, Stanzas suggested in a Steamboat off St. Bees' Head, on the coast of Cumberland:

        As a cresset true that darts its length / Of beamy lustre from a tower of strength.

   2. A metal basket filled with burning material, used to attract fish when night fishing; a fire basket.
   3. (coopering) A small furnace or iron cage to hold fire for charring the inside of a cask, and making the staves flexible.
      • 1805–1814, Dante Alighieri, Henry Francis Cary (translator), The Divine Comedy, "Inferno", Canto VIII

        We reach'd the lofty turret's base, our eyes / its height ascended, where we mark'd uphung / two cressets and another saw from far

Translations

metal cup filled with pitch

• Middle English: cresset

iron cage to hold fire

• Polish: kaganiec (pl) m, kaganek (pl) m
• Spanish: antorcha (es) f

See also

• brazier, fire basket

Anagrams

• Secrest, resects, secrets

Middle English

Alternative forms

• crasset, crescet, cressett, cressyt, kirsett, kressette

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French crasset, cresset, possibly from a West Germanic language.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /krɛˈsɛt/, /ˈkrɛsɛt/

Noun

cresset (plural cressettes)

1. cresset (metal cup filled with pitch)

Descendants

• English: cresset

References

• “cresset, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.