[a. F. casque, ad. Sp. casco in same sense: see CASK sb.]
1. A piece of armor to cover the head; a helmet. A term applied very loosely to all kinds of military head-pieces, and now only historical, poetical or foreign. Formerly written CASK.
1580–1649. [see CASK sb.4].
1696. Phillips, Casque, a helmet.
1714. Gay, Trivia, III. 363. The fireman sweats beneath his crooked arms, A leathern casque his vent’rous head defends.
1791. Cowper, Iliad, III. 375. They shook them in a brazen casque.
1842. Tennyson, Galahad, 1. My good blade carves the casques of men.
1877. Daily News, 24 Dec., 5/4. The curious brass-fronted, mitre-like casques of the Pauloff Guard regiment.
2. transf. a. Bot. The upper lip of the corolla of certain Labiatæ; also the upper division of the perigone of orchids. b. Zool. A helmet-like structure, as in the cassowary, the toucans.
1790. R. Bland, in Med. Commun., II. 456. A very small part of the bony casque.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., iv. 43. The casque or upper lip arched in order to cover the rest of the flower.
1871. Darwin, Desc. Man, II. xiii. 72. In Buceros corrugatus, the whole beak and immense casque are coloured more conspicuously in the male than in the female.
† 3. (See quot.)
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Casque, in natural history, a name given to a kind of murex, called the helmet-shell.
