wainscot

English

From Middle English waynscot, from Middle Low German wagenschot or Middle Dutch waghenscote, assumed to be from wagen (“wagon”) (from Old Saxon wagan) + schot, meaning “partition, crossbar," which is from or related to skiotan (“to shoot”).

wainscot (plural wainscots)

(architecture) An area of wooden (especially oaken) panelling on the lower part of a room’s walls.
- 1598, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 3, scene 3:
  […] this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber, warp, warp.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 11:
  Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.
Any of various noctuid moths.

an area of wooden panelling on the lower part of a room's walls

wainscot (third-person singular simple present wainscots, present participle wainscoting or wainscotting, simple past and past participle wainscoted or wainscotted)

to decorate a wall with a wainscot

^ Jespersen, Otto (1909), A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (Sammlung germanischer Elementar- und Handbücher; 9)‎^[1], volume I: Sounds and Spellings, London: George Allen & Unwin, published 1961, § 4.412, page 128.
^ Ross, Alan S. C. (1954), “Linguistic Class Indicators in Present-Day English”, in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen‎^[2], volume 55, number 1, Helsinki: Modern Language Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 41.