Bregaund

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic name for a brigandine, a flexible jacket of small metal plates sewn between layers of cloth or leather
2. A medieval term for a sleeveless body armour made of overlapping steel plates riveted inside a fabric covering
3. Historically, a type of protective jacket reinforced with small iron plates, worn as light armour in the Middle Ages

Etymology: In heraldry and medieval dress, "bregaund" named a fur, and it survives mainly in the vocabulary of coats of arms. Its exact origin is uncertain. It seems to have come into English from Anglo-French in the later Middle Ages, but the surviving spellings vary too much for scholars to settle on one source with confidence. Its meaning is clearer than its ancestry. Medieval fur was prized and often pictured in armorial designs, and the term belonged to that world of costly linings and painted shields. Because it appears mostly in records of clothing and heraldic description, it rarely shows up in ordinary speech, and that narrow use is much of what its history records.