Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A piece of armor used to protect the forearm.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The piece of armor which protects the forearm from the elbow-joint to the wrist, whether covering the outer part of the arm only and worn over the sleeve of mail (compare garde-bras and brassart), or inclosing the whole forearm in a cylinder of iron. See cut under rerebrace.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anc. Armor) The piece designed to protect the arm from the elbow to the wrist.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The piece of armor designed to protect the arm from the elbow to the wrist.
  • noun The pieces of armor protecting the arm from the shoulder to the wrist. Not in common use in this sense, most scholars preferring the narrower definition, of armor for the lower arm.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun cannon of plate armor protecting the forearm

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English vambras, from Anglo-Norman vauntbras : vaunt (variant of Old French avaunt, before; see vanguard) + bras, arm; see bracer.]

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Examples

  • Betting the knight, his money on the armor, the intricate chain mail like wire net or metal scrim, being's effulgent Maginot line, his stake on the weighted mace and plate mittens, on the hinged couters and poleyns, on vambrace and cuisee and greave, banging the breast-plate and all the jewelry of battle for timbre and pitch like a jerk slamming doors and kicking tires in a used car lot.

    Style in Fiction 2009

  • A passage such as this one is much more interested in setting up Elkin's signature lyric rhythms and, in this case, doling out strange and, in context, goofy words -- "vambrace and cuisee and greave" -- than in establishing Elkin's ability to dispense "some lovely little selection of words."

    Style in Fiction 2009

  • I can't help but it sounds like the author of that article has a few sour grapes to eat and never read a Fantasy book before, or he would not stumble over words like merlon and vambrace.

    Malazan at 10: An old interview with Steven Erikson Adam Whitehead 2009

  • I think the interviewer is writing for people who don't know what a merlon or a vambrace are.

    Malazan at 10: An old interview with Steven Erikson Adam Whitehead 2009

  • Now it nicked him in the shoulder where the vambrace was buckled to the corselet; now it bored a shrewd hole under the light brissart, and blood followed; now, with fatal dexterity, it darted through the visor, and came back to the recover deeply tinged with blood.

    A Legend of the Rhine 2006

  • Now it nicked him in the shoulder where the vambrace was buckled to the corselet; now it bored a shrewd hole under the light brissart, and blood followed; now, with fatal dexterity, it darted through the visor, and came back to the recover deeply tinged with blood.

    Burlesques 2006

  • The oilskin cloth fell by the wayside as he tucked one vambrace under his arm, struggling to force his bleeding left hand into the mesh gauntlet of the other.

    Kushiel's Avatar Carey, Jacqueline, 1964- 2003

  • I saw even Joscelin smile, and raise one hand in salute, steel vambrace flashing.

    Kushiel's Avatar Carey, Jacqueline, 1964- 2003

  • Yet on this opposite hemisphere, a glance at instruments on his vambrace confirmed the findings made by the robot.

    Inconstant Star Anderson, Poul, 1926- 1991

  • Talons like ivory knives bit into the leather of Tarma's vambrace; the wings fanned the air for a heartbeat more, then the bird settled on Tarma's forearm, regal and gilded.

    The Oathbound Lackey, Mercedes 1988

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