reredemain

plural reredemains

1. archaicA backward stroke of the hand.

   [H]e that day / Did execution on the heathen foe, / Worthy of fame, for with one dexterous slash / He twains Carrillo, then a reredemain / Lops off an arm of Roco, Indian fierce and brave.

   1965, Martín del Barco Centenera, translated by Walter Owen, The Argentine and the Conquest of the River Plate, page 168

   2 more examples

   But all ſuch plagues, calamities and troubles (vvhich I feared and ſuſpected) might have chanced on me if I had taken the rule and regiment of the reale, I ſhall vvith a reredemaine ſo make them rebound to our common enemie that calleth himſelfe King, […]

   c. 1513–1518 (date written), Thomas More, “The Tragicall Historie of the Life and Reigne of Richard the Third. The Second Yeere of His Raigne.”, in The Historie of the Pitifvll Life, and Unfortunate Death of Edward the Fifth, and the then Duke of Yorke His Brother: […], London: […] Thomas Payne and M[atthew] Simmons, published 1641, →OCLC, page 268

   And ſuch a blovv he lent him as he paſt, / Vpon his ſhoulders from the reredemaine, / That horſe and man vnto the ground vvere caſt, / VVhence neither of them roſe aliue againe: […]

   1591, [Ludovico Ariosto], “The XVI. Booke”, in Iohn Haringtõ [i.e., John Harington], transl., Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse, […], London: […] Richard Field […], →OCLC, stanza 50