couchant

C3O1U1C3H4A1N1T1
UK/ˈkaʊtʃənt/

adjective

Lying with belly down and front legs extended; crouching.

Similar
unerect
OriginMiddle English couchant ← Middle French couchant →
Scrabble 15
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Meanings

adjectivecouchant (not comparable)
  1. not comparableLying with belly down and front legs extended; crouching.

    Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?

    1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC
    3 more examples

    The dogs, with eager yelp, / Are struggling to be free; / The hawks in frequent stoop / Token their haste for flight; / And couchant on the saddle-bow, / With tranquil eyes, and talons sheath’d, / The ounce expects his liberty.

    1801, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC

    There were the tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel.

    1865, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “The Shipwreck”, in [Sophia Thoreau; William Ellery Channing], editors, Cape Cod, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 14

    Two figures faced each other, large, austere; / A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast, / An angel standing in the moonlight clear; […]

    1880, James Thomson, chapter XX, in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems, London: Reeves and Turner, […], →OCLC
  2. not comparablegovernmentRepresented as crouching with the head raised.

    His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould […]

    1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Synonyms & antonyms

adjectivelying on the stomach with head raised with legs pointed forward

Similar
unerect
Also see
crouchantunerect

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

  1. Middle Frenchcouchant
  2. Middle Englishcouchant
  3. Englishcouchant

From Middle English couchant, from Middle French couchant.

More words from Middle English, Middle French

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Russian лежащий
  • лежащий (ležaščij)lying with belly down; crouching
Swedish liggande
  • ligganderepresented as crouching with the head raised
Cite this entry
APA

couchant. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/couchant

MLA

“couchant.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/couchant. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “couchant,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/couchant.

Source: couchant on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.