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frons

Pronunciation: [ˈfrõːs]

“frons” is a Latin word. Its 16 meanings in English:

noun

  1. the forehead, brow, front
  2. the brow or countenance as an indicator of the feelings
  3. as the mirror of a person's character or feelings
  4. as expressing shame
  5. a sense of modesty; decorum, decency
  6. as expressing impudence, boldness
  7. the outward appearance, external quality, look (as distinct from inward nature)
  8. the forepart of anything; the front, facade (as opposed to back and sides)
  9. the front of an army or fleet in battle array
  10. frontage (the part facing the road, river, coastline), usually in ref. to its length
  11. the coastline; a projecting piece of coast
  12. the outer extremity or face, the outer or inner surface (eg. of a wall), the top or bottom end (of a trench), the broad side (of a rectangle)
  13. either of the flat ends of a papyrus scroll
  14. the exposed surface, outer side of anything
  15. a leafy branch; foliage; greenery
  16. a garland made of leaves or twigs

Etymology

Unknown. Per De Vaan, "no plausible etymology." Pokorny compares Irish braine (“prow, edge”), Old Norse brandr (“acroterium”)), deriving them from *bʰren- (“to project; edge”). De Vaan finds these proposed relationships to be unconvincing due to semantic difficulties. De Vaan suggests a possible derivation from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰron-t- (“side where the mouth is, front”), perhaps from a root…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.