Codpiece

Definitions

1. A part of male dress in the 15th and 16th centuries, worn in front of the breeches to cover the male genitals.
   historical
2. A conspicuous protection for the male genitals in a suit of plate armor.

Equivalents

Examples

“, Act III, Scene III, line 130. Borachio: Seest thou not, I say⟳, what a deformed thief this fashion is, how giddily ’a turns about all the hot-bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty, sometimes fashioning them like⟳ Pharaoh’s soldiers in the reechy painting, sometime like⟳ god Bel’s priests in the old church-window, sometime like⟳ the shaven Hercules in the smirch’d worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club?”

“Once Francis lifts her hand. She pulls back, half-resisting, and for one moment it seems he intends to lay⟳ her little fingers upon his unspeakable codpiece.”

“[David] Lynch’s film is actually much better than its terrible reputation, but Sting⟳ in a codpiece and a Toto soundtrack will never match⟳ the potential greatness of [Alejandro] Jodorowsky’s unmade epic.”

“On some suits were screwed large iron⟳ cod-pieces; these, according to tradition, were intended to prevent⟳ the ill consequences of those violent shocks received in charging, either in battle, or at a tournament. Same say⟳, they were meant to contain⟳ sponges for receiving the water of knights, who in the heat of an engagement might not have⟳ any more convenient method of discharging it. But most probably, they were rather constructed in conformity to a reigning fashion in the make⟳ of the breeches of those times.”

CEFR level