helmlet

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

helmlet (plural helmlets)

1. A helmet that covers the face; helm.
   • 1856 April, “Balancing the Books”, in Littell's Living Age, volume 49, number 621, page 149:

     Goggles laid down his pen gently, and elevated the spectacles from his nose till they rested on his forehead, as a knight of old would throw up the visor of his helmlet– 't was a trick he had, when he was about saying or doing anything emphatic – a symbolical intimation that he was going to use some other organ than his eyes.

   • 1868, Frank Moore, The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events:

     When the wife of a great prince, whose husband was absent at the siege of Troy, was urged by her friends to put on her royal robes and be cheerful, she answered: “My husband is under the walls of Troy; shall I adorn my hair while he wears a helmlet?

   • 1878, Charles M. Clay, How She Came Into Her Kingdom: A Romance, page 255:

     It brought back to me the best of the long ago:—the wild garrison life on the plains, when day after day a restless child galloped by an officer's side, among stalwart troopers, and listened to tales of “our people at home,” or to old world stories, when men of our race wore steel corslets and helmlets, and fought for “St. George and Merrie England;"

   • 2018, Hiram Hoyt Richmond, Montezuma, page 128:

     At your front—in your face—he may strike you; But he takes not the night for his helmlet, Nor is treachery ever his weapon.