Also 8 egrette, aigret. [a. mod. Fr. aigrette, the EGRET or Lesser White Heron, whose head is ‘adorned with a beautiful crest, composed of some short and two long feathers, hanging backward.’ The name was in Fr. transferred to the crest itself, extended to similar plumes borne by other birds, or worn by ladies in a head-dress, as the tuft of a helmet, etc. Thence it has received in modern times further extension in the language of Science. As the word was already in use in the form egret(te for the bird, this spelling was also at first used in the present sense.]
1. The Lesser White Heron: see EGRET.
1845. Blackw. Mag., LVII. 42. The white aigrette; superior in size to the common heron.
2. A tuft of feathers such as that borne by the Egret and some other birds; a spray of gems, or similar ornament, worn on the head.
a. 1645. W. Browne, Temple Masque, 147. Egrettes with a greene fall.
1759. in Phil. Trans., LI. 37. They contain an infinite number of prickles, which are … brilliant, like an aigrette of glass.
1784. Beckford, Vathek (1868), 27. To the third my aigret of rubies.
1843. Prescott, Mexico, I. ii. (1864), 11. A human skull … surmounted by an aigrette of brilliant plumes and precious stones.
1878. Lady Herbert, trans. Hübner’s Round the World, II. iv. 326. He wore a colossal aigrette, made of bamboo and horse-hair.
3. Hence applied in Science to tufts of similar appearance, as the feathery pappus of composite plants like the Dandelion; the feathery tufts on the heads of certain insects, etc.; luminous rays seen shooting out from behind the moon in solar eclipses, or at the ends of electrified bodies.
1816. Keith, Physiol. Bot., II. 404. Furnished with an aigrette or down, as in the case of the Dandelion.
1828. Kirby & Spence, Entomol., III. xxix. 176. Some have the anterior aigrettes disposed like the arms of a cross.
1879. Lockyer, Elem. Astron., iii. xviii. 103. Rays of light, called aigrettes, diverge from the Moon’s edge, and appear to be shining through the light of the corona.
4. Comb. as aigrette-like.
1873. Sir J. Herschel, Pop. Lect., iii. § 43. 128. Till it assumed at length that superb aigrette-like form.
