lunette

plural lunettes

1. architectureA small opening in a vaulted roof of a circular or crescent shape.First known use 17th c.

   Next came the semi-landing with the lunette window, and here the door opened under the pressure of a single finger, and with a sigh and creak.

   1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 820

   1 more example

   Nanny Broome was looking up at the outer wall. Just under the ceiling there were three lunette windows, heavily barred and blacked out in the normal way by centuries of grime.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 14, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

2. architectureA crescent-shaped recess or void in the space above a window or door.First known use 18th c.

   The decoration of a lunette discovered in the Duomo of Pistoia in the 1950s, which represents Christ blessing and Saints James and John, all bust-length, constitutes a more remarkable and stylistically more advanced approach to painting.

   1930, Offner, Steinweg et al., A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, p. 49

3. obsoleteAn image or other representation of a crescent moon.First known use 18th–19th c.

   The lesser portions of the tablet has over this Mithras, a lunette or symbol of the moon, who, according to Porphyry's comment, is the queen of generation and as such was denominated by the ancients both a bee and a bull [...].

   1822, Moses Aaron Richardson, The Local Historian's Table Book of Remarkable Occurrences, volume 3, page 245

4. fortificationsA field work consisting of two projecting faces forming a wedge each of which extends from one of two parallel flanks.First known use 18th c.

   This Lunette, as we have seen, was confronted, and even in siege-form "approached", by a part of Canrobert's army [...].

   1863, Alexander William Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea, volume VII, page 185

   1 more example

   In mid-December [...], the French succeeded in storming the half-ruined outwork of the St Laurent lunette and advancing to a position immediately beneath the walls with their breaching batteries.

   2001, WG Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell, Austerlitz, Penguin, published 2011, page 21

5. ChristianityA luna: a crescent-shaped receptacle, often glass, for holding the (consecrated) host (the bread of communion) upright when exposed in the monstrance.First known use 19th c.

   On those occasions when lunettes, custodia and monstrances are used, the sacristan needs to be sure that the lunette fits into the given monstrance, that the host fits into the lunette, and that the host is put out before Mass for consecration.

   2001, David Philippart, Basket, Basin, Plate, and Cup: Vessels in the Liturgy, page 33

6. A type of flattened glass used in watch-making.First known use 19th c.

   Lunette and double lunette glasses are generally sized in quarters; crystals and thin flat lunettes for hunters in eighths.

   2008, FJ Garrard, Watch Repairing, Cleaning and Adjusting: A Practical Handbook, page 157

7. The circular hole in the guillotine in which the victim's neck is placed.First known use 19th c.

   some "future" events may be likelier than others, O.K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has already closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.

   1972, Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things, McGraw-Hill, published 1972, page 92

8. geographyA type of crescent-shaped dune blown up along a lake basin, especially in dry areas of Australia.First known use 20th c.

   Sticking out of a crescent-shaped sand ridge of a type known as a lunette were some human bones.

   2003, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, BCA, published 2003, page 403

   1 more example

   These lunettes are relicts of a Late Pleistocene deflationary period, when the lacustrine hydrology changed from perennial water-filled lakes to desiccated mudflats.

   2006, John K Warren, Evaporites: Sediments, Resources and Hydrocarbons, page 31

9. farrieryA half horseshoe, lacking the sponge.
10. A piece of felt to cover the eye of a vicious horse.
11. An iron shoe at the end of the stock of a gun carriage.
12. in pluralSee lunettes.