sconce

noun

1. A fixture for a light, which holds it and provides a screen against wind or against a naked flame or lightbulb.

   “[…]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.”

   “There wasn't a room that had not been clad, picture-railed, dadoed, panelled, stained, gilded, bordered and generally made over to within an inch of its life - can I interest anyone in a gold cherubic sconce?”

2. A fixture for a light, which holds it and provides a screen against wind or against a naked flame or lightbulb.

   “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.”

   “Also the candles flickering in the blood-red sconces are black and the body on the crucifix is that of a full-breasted woman.”

3. A head or a skull.

   “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 […]”

4. A poll tax; a mulct or fine.

   “I'll gladly pay a sconce”

5. 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.

   “.”

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

6. A type of small fort or other fortification, especially as built to defend a pass or ford.

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

7. (obsolete)A hut for protection and shelter; a stall.

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

8. A squinch.
9. A fragment of a floe of ice.

   “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.”

10. A fixed seat or shelf.

verb

1. (obsolete)To impose a fine, a forfeit, or a mulct.

   “The Rector sconced him in the buttery-book, but Webberly “wiped it off, with irreverent and unbeseeming language.” For this, he had to apologise, and go without his commons for three months.”

2. During a meal or as part of a drinking game, to announce some (usually outrageous) deed such that anyone who has done it must drink; similar to I have never; commonly associated with crewdates; very similar to fining at Cambridge University.

   “I sconce anyone who has ever…”

3. (obsolete)To shut within a sconce; to imprison.