coign

Related to coign: coign of vantage

a coign of vantage

dated A beneficial spot or position, especially for viewing something. "Coign" is an archaic spelling of "quoin," the outside corner of a building or wall. My office affords me a fine coign of vantage, as I can watch everyone on the floor without them knowing,
See also: coign, of, vantage
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

coign of vantage

a favourable position for observation or action. literary
The literal sense of a coign of vantage is ‘a projecting corner of a wall or building’; the phrase appears in Shakespeare 's Macbeth in Duncan's description of the nesting places of the swifts at Macbeth's castle. The word quoin meaning ‘an external angle of a building’ still exists in English, but the archaic spelling coign survives mainly in this phrase.
See also: coign, of, vantage
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • a coign of vantage
  • coign of vantage
  • vantage
  • any fule kno
  • put asunder
  • another pair of eyes
  • a fresh pair of eyes
  • go out of use
  • au naturel
  • of that ilk
References in periodicals archive
Like its sister novels, the third book of Eleanora Tate's South Carolina Trilogy exposes the intricate web of interconnections between family and community problems; simultaneously, it moves in a new direction to explore from an African-American child's coign of vantage increasingly complex issues of personal and social conscience.
upon principal, and no nook or coign of legal advantage left
Surah 7:46 and 48 speak of a group of men who are situated in some coign of vantage from which they can observe both the blessed in heaven and the damned in hell: wa-baynahuma hijabun wa-ala l-arafi rijalun yarifu-na kullan bi-simahum wa-nadaw ashaba l-jannati an salamun alaykum lam yadkhuluha wa-hum note he rejects the explanations offered by the exegetes (see below), but admits that "onction" is not satisfactory, and suggests it might mean: "L'allure procuree par Dieu h I'homme converti au Monotheisme d'Abraham." Paret, p.
In fact, Howth was extremely critical of Sidney: of his repeatedly promising but failing to deliver reform, of his abuse of the cess to the grievous detriment of the Pale, of his intent to abolish coign and livery, of his displacement of 'old' English lords from influence in the government of Ireland.
With over six months to go for the launch edition, confirmed participants include Arknav International, Aargus Global Logistics, Coign Consulting, Forbes and Co, Jaigad Ports and Infrastructure, Logistics India Real Estate, Online Tourism and Freight, as well as country pavilions from France, Belgium, Germany and China.
Once again, Swinburne begins his poem with a concentric landscape: In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
With the elements of the scene fracturing across image clusters like a rapidly panning camera, the reader can hardly focus on a single sequence before a contrastive and contradictory one interrupts it, but we might isolate alongside the geographical transfer of substances the "monastic coign" as the secular displacements of sacramental and sacrificial nuances that overtake the scene.
No jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
In the poem "Kinoull Hill," the "we" referred to are set apart, virtually hiding from a cold, austere landscape: "We sat on the verge of the steep / In a coign where the east wind failed" (ll.
In Strange Practice, it is observed how "London's lost rivers had taken on a romantic sort of mystery in popular awareness," and the narrator describes how they flow "through cathedrals of tile and brick, unseen arches and coigns of gorgeous complexity guiding and shaping their eventual journey" (Shaw 76).