cockade

plural cockades · alternative cocarde

1. A rosette or knot of ribbon worn in a hat, especially as an office or party badge.

   The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him.

   1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC

   2 more examples

   […] and Nature had moreover wrote GENTLEMAN with so fair a hand in every line of his countenance, that even his tarnish’d gold-laced hat and huge cockade of flimsy taffeta became him; […]

   1761, [Laurence Sterne], chapter LXI, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume IV, London: […] R[obert] and J[ames] Dodsley […], →OCLC

   Through the park railings these glances beheld men and women riding in the Row, […] solitary horsemen looking unsociable, and solitary women followed at a long distance by a groom with a cockade to his hat and a leather belt over his tight-fitting coat.

   1906 January–October, Joseph Conrad, chapter II, in The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, London: Methuen & Co., […], published September 1907, →OCLC

2. aeronauticsAn emblem of concentric circles of different colours, identifying the country to which an aircraft belongs.

   On the bank of the river in French territory lies a wrecked plane bearing the cockade of the French service.

   1920, “Nerve-Strain”, in James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff, editors, The Lafayette Flying Corps, volume 2, Houghton Mifflin Company, page 103

   Synonyms: roundel