Quoin (disambiguation)
Generally, a quoin is a wedge, used to support or anchor other items. More specifically, quoin may refer to:
- In architecture, quoins are the corner stones that anchor the edge of the building wall.
- Quoins may be structural, or may be decorative. Architects and builders use quoins to give the impression of strength and firmness to the outline of a building. Rough-finished or rusticated masonry is also frequently used for foundation layers of buildings to give the same impression. Quoinage can be carried out in stone on a stone building, with stone on a predominantly brick building, or by laying brick masonry to give the appearance of blocks at the corner. If structural, quoins are usually part of load bearing walls; if decorative, they may be made of a variety of materials including brick, stone and wood. The most common form of decorative use for a quoins uses an alternative pattern of rectangles that wrap around the wall, mimicking the pattern of stone blocks or brick as they would wrap around a corner and thus join the two walls. In Georgian architecture, wooden quoins were most often part of an overall theme to imply stone, and thus permanence.
- In printing, quoins are wedges used by printers to hold the hand-set type in place in a printer's chase. It is sometimes claimed that this is the origin and true spelling of the expression "to coin a phrase," (i.e., "to quoin a phrase"), but a simple check of the history of the words in the Oxford English Dictionary shows this claim to be bogus.
- In naval warfare, a quoin was a wedge manipulated at the breech end of a cannon to raise or lower the barrel.