couchant
Americanadjective
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lying down; crouching.
-
Heraldry. (of an animal) represented as lying on its stomach with its hind legs and forelegs pointed forward.
adjective
Etymology
Origin of couchant
1400–50; late Middle English < Middle French, present participle of coucher to lay or lie. See couch, -ant
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Gen. Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac, “but if the couchant lion postpones his spring too long, people will begin wondering whether he is not a stuffed specimen after all.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026
“What I want to see before I die,” Frederick Douglass wrote, “is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.”
From Washington Post ● Dec. 31, 2020
Which is the proper symbol for the Tories, asked the Manchester Guardian, lion rampant or hen couchant?
From Time Magazine Archive
According to a common rule the only cattle allowed to use the village pasture was that which was constantly kept in the village, levant e couchant en le maner.
From Villainage in England Essays in English Mediaeval History by Vinogradoff, Paul
It was like the placid sky that precedes the storm—the calm ocean that in a moment may be convulsed by the squall—the couchant lion that on the slightest provocation may be roused to ungovernable rage.
From Osceola the Seminole The Red Fawn of the Flower Land by Reid, Mayne
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
