[f. TRUNK v.1 + -ED1.]
† 1. Cut short, truncated; lopped; mutilated. Obs. exc. as in 2.
1551–2. in Feuillerat, Revels Edw. VI. (1914), 79. A payre of sleves trunked.
1559. W. Cunningham, Cosmogr. Glasse, 36. They be named Colures, or trunckid circles.
1586. J. Hooker, Hist. Irel., in Holinshed, II. 24/1. By reason they had beene so long couered,… buried vnder the sands, they stood as trunked and polled trees.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., II. v. 4. The sharpe steele … from the head the body sundred quight…. The truncked beast fast bleeding did him fowly dight.
1594. ? Greene, Selimus, Wks. (Grosart), XIV. 249. My blood, Streaming in riuers from my tronked armes.
2. Her. (a) Having the extremities cut off smoothly: = COUPED. (b) Of the head of a beast: Cut off close behind the horns; = CABOCHED.
a. 1500. in Baring-Gould & Twigge, W. Armory (1898), 4. A fesse trunked betweene 3 escalops sab.
1610. Bolton, Elem. Armories, 111. Of that maim’d, or truncked kinde, are this, and the like.
1610. Guillim, Heraldry, III. iv. 95. Argent; two Billets Raguled, and Truncked, placed Saltirewaies. Ibid., xiv. 128. These horned beasts … haue also their heads borne Trunked [ed. 1638 adds Which of some Armorists is blazoned Cabossed].
1766–84. Porny, Heraldry (ed. 4), Gloss., Trunked..., is applied to Trees, &c. that are couped or cut off smooth.
c. 1828. Berry, Encycl. Her., I. Gloss. s.v. Trunk, When the tree is borne couped of all its branches, and separated from its roots, it is then termed trunked. Ibid., Trunked,… is likewise used in the same sense as cabossed, or caboshed, that is, showing only the head or face of a beast.
