n. A ceremony used in conferring knighthood, anciently consisting in an embrace, afterward in giving the candidate a blow upon the shoulder with the flat of a sword, the latter being the present method; hence, the blow itself.n. In music, a brace or couplet connecting several staves. In architecture, an ornament composed of two ogee curves meeting in the middle, each concave toward its outer extremity and convex toward the point at which it meets the other.n. In Roman and early monastic MSS., the curved stroke made by the copyist around a final word written below the line to which it belonged, in order to avoid carrying it on to the next.