Brewer's: Estramaçon

(French). A blow or cut with a sword, hence also “estramaçonner,” to play at backsword. Sir Walter Scott uses the word in the sense of a feint or pretended cut. Hence Sir Jeffrey Hudson, the dwarf, says:

“I tripped a hasty morris ... upon the dining table, now offering my sword [to the Duke of Buckingham], and now recovering it, I made ... a sort of estramacon at his nose, the dexterity of which consists in coming mightily near to the object without touching it.” —Peveril of the Peak, chap. xxxiv.

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