Meaning of Sconce | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A type of small fort or other fortification, especially as built to defend a pass or ford.
2. A fixture for a light, which holds it and provides a screen against wind or against a naked flame or lightbulb.
3. A head or a skull.
4. A poll tax; a mulct or fine.
5. A hut for protection and shelter; a stall.
   obsolete
6. A candlestick (holder for a candle, especially a circular tube, with a brim, into which a candle is inserted), either with a handle for carrying, or with a bracket for attaching to a wall.
7. An act of sconcing; very similar to a fine at Cambridge University, though a sconce is the act of issuing a penalty rather than the penalty itself.
8. A squinch.
9. A fragment of a floe of ice.
10. A fixed seat or shelf.

Equivalents

Examples

“[…]tapers put into lanterns or sconces of several-coloured, oiled paper, that the wind might not annoy them.”

“Golden sconces hang not on the walls.”

“Taking the candle […] she stood with the little flat brass sconce in her hand.”

“This strange scene was lightd up by candles in high and havy brass sconces.”

“Novv as I am a Chriſtian anſvver me, / In vvhat ſafe place you haue beſtovv'd my monie; / Or I ſhall breake that merrie ſconce of yours / That ſtands on tricks, vvhen I am vndiſpos'd: / VVhere is the thouſand Markes thou hadſt of me?”

“Why does he suffer this rude knave now, to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?”

“Long time this sconce a helmet wore, / But sickness smites the conscience sore; / He broke his sword, and hither bore / His gear and plunder, / Took to the cowl,—then rav’d and swore / At his damn’d blunder!”

“[…] roll the rider and his horse in the dust, or endeavour to drive their lance through the bars of the visor into the bull's eye of their friend's sconce, […]”

“[…]; an old blue jacket, that at one time had been a coat, looped over a red plush “singlet” of perhaps twenty or even forty years' wear : his almost hairless sconce bared to the sun, from which it had received an imperishable coating of tan, he was an object that few would pass without hailing with observations,[…] he wiped his shining sconce [...] and raised his visor […]”

“I'll gladly pay a sconce”

“The table opposite started singing "shit sconce, shit scone^([sic]), shit sconce, shit sconce" […]”

“No sconce or fortress of his raising was ever known either to have been forced, or yielded up, or quitted.”

“one that […] must raise a sconce by the highway and sell switches”

“Just then, a broad sconce-piece or low water-washed berg came driving up from the southward. The thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in Melville Bay; and as the sconce moved rapidly close alongside us, McGary managed to plant an anchor on its slope and hold on to it by a whale-line.”

CEFR level