Brackets and codpieces

Another good bit from the Etymologicon [

previously

]. This time, why brackets are named after codpieces. The ever-more-elaborate codpieces in medieval armour were called

braguettes

.

A Braguette

Then came an architect fixated on groins

What do you call the bit of stone that bulges out from a pillar to support a balcony or a roo? Until the sixteenth century nobody had been certain what to call them; but one day somebody must have been gazing at a cathedral wall and, in a moment of sudden clarity, realised that the architectural supports looked like nothing so much as Henry VIII’s groin.

So the supports became known as

braguettes

, which first became

brackets

in a dictionary compiled by Pocahontas’ lover. Then, because a double bracket looks a bit like [, the word was transferred onwards to name a piece of punctuation

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