Ouche

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /aÊŠtʃ/

Alternative forms

• nouch
• ouch
• owch

Origin

From Middle English ouche, from nouche, which in phrases like a nouche was re-analyzed as an ouche. From Anglo-Norman nusche, Old French nusche (with metanalysis), from a Germanic source; compare German Nusche.

Full definition of ouche

Noun

1. (poetic) A brooch or clasp for fastening a piece of clothing together, especially when valuable or set with jewels.
• 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book XX:and the horse was trapped in the same wyse, down to the helys, wyth many owchys, i-sette with stonys and perelys in golde, to the numbir of a thousande.
• 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.ii:a Persian mitre on her hed
  She wore, with crownes and owches garnished ....
• 1611, Bible, Authorized Version, Exodus XXVIII.11:With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, shalt thou engrave the two stones with the names of the children of Israel: thou shalt make them to be set in ouches of gold.
• 1896, Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Story of Ung’, Seven Seas:There would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift,
  Nor dole of the oily timber that strands with the Baltic drift;
  No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale;
  No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.