brayette

English

A mail brayette.

A plate brayette or codpiece.

Etymology

From French brayette or an earlier (Old or Middle French) form thereof.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bɹæˈjɛt/

Noun

brayette (plural brayettes)

1. (historical) An item of armor (mail or plate) protecting the groin.

   Coordinate terms: paunce (“armor covering the abdomen”), tasse (“armor covering the upper legs”)

   • 1895, Golden Gate Park Memorial Museum (San Francisco, Calif.), Guide to the Halls and Galleries of the Memorial Museum ..., page 87:

     30071 Black Armor with Embossed White Stripes, about 1540 : Burgonet with upraising helmet-shade; gorget with pauldrons attached; breast-plate with tapul and great brayette; back-plate with loin-guard. ' Nuremberg mark.

   • 1925, The Connoisseur:

     Among the detached pieces of mail are nine hauberks, to all of which a European origin is assigned, a fine standard of mail of the late fifteenth century, and a mail brayette similar to that on the effigy of Count Otto IV. of ...

   • 1942, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections:

     European chain mail was rarely made after 1600 figures suits of plate armor from the Maximilian period (1500-1540) in which mail was used for brayettes or groin defenses (op. cit., figs. 65, 67, 72, 75, 91).

   • 2000, Harold Leslie Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526-1783, Courier Corporation, →ISBN, page 120:

     These have been denoted the garde rein or culet. Usually a skirt of mail or at least a mail brayette was worn under these defenses. The shoulders were protected by pauldrons of lames, overlapping from the bottom up. These lames were carried well around over the back and breast ...

   • 2012, Mary G. Houston, Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries, Courier Corporation, →ISBN, page 337:

     The body itself is defended also by plate armour so that instead of the jupon, gambeson and hauberk-of-mail we find the cuirass now covering breast and back with the brayettes or taces which form a short petticoat or skirt of steel ...

   • 2017, Donald J. La Rocca, How to Read European Armor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, →ISBN, page 11:

     ... covered the armpits or the crooks of the elbows and were attached to arming jackets, garments specially tailored to be worn under armor; and mail breeches, called brayettes or pairs of paunces, could be worn by men fighting on foot.

French

Pronunciation

• Audio

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Noun

brayette f (plural brayettes)

1. fly (front slit-like opening of underpants)