[L. cippus a post, stake, etc.]
1. [as in late L.] The stocks.
1621. B. Jonson, Gipsies Metam., Wks. (1692), 616/2.
| Here’s no Justice Lippus | |
| Will seek for to nip us, | |
| In Cramp-ring, or Cippus. |
1692. Coles, Cippus, a pair of Stocks.
2. Arch. ‘A small low column, sometimes without a base or capital, and most frequently bearing an inscription’ (Gwilt).
By the ancients employed as a landmark, a memorial of remarkable events, and esp. as a sepulchral monument.
1708. Phillips, Cippus, a Pillar with an Inscription, a Gravestone.
1731–1800. Bailey.
1839. De Quincey, Wks. (1862), IV. 259. There is, in Ceylon, a granite cippus, or monumental pillar, of immemorial antiquity.
1850. Art Jrnl., 219. Cippi have been mistaken for altars.
1860. B’ness Bunsen, in Hare, Life, II. v. 271. The inscription on the cippus placed over the remains of the two children.
