CADENCY

Cadency

In heraldry, cadency is any systematic way of distinguishing otherwise identical coats of arms belonging to members of the same family. Cadency is necessary in heraldic systems in which a given design may be owned by only one person at once, generally the head of the senior line of a particular family. Because heraldic designs may be used by sons whilst their father is still alive, some form of differencing is required so as not to usurp the father's arms, known as the "undifferenced" or "plain coat". Historically arms were only heritable by males and therefore cadency marks have no relevance to daughters, except in the modern era in Canadian ...

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cadency

Noun

  1. Any systematic way of distinguishing similar coats of arms belonging to members of the same family.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: cadency
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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