Definition of "coign"

By many a dern and painful perchOf Pericles the careful searchBy the four opposing coignsWhich the world together joins,Is made with all due diligence

c. 1607–1608, William Shakeſpeare, The Late, And much admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: Imprinted at London for Henry Goſſon, […], published 1609, [Act III, Prologue]

Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street.

1922, James Joyce, Ulysses

this snug monastic coign, this dreamy and heatless alcove of what we call the best of thought.

1936, William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!!

They lay quietly as the morning advanced its little way, hid snug in their greenwood coign. —

1964, Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun

The wall was intricately labored—lined and coigned and serried with regular and irregular groups of windows, balconies, buttresses ...

1977, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane, page 212

In sunshine as vivid as revelation, Linden Avery knelt on the stone of a low-walled coign like a balcony high in the outward face of Revelstone's watchtower.

2007, Stephen R. Donaldson, Fatal Revenant, page 3

In both the orthogonal and clinographic projections the light rays joining the eye and crystal coigns (solid angles, corners at which three or more edges meet) are all parallel

1922, Alfred Tutton, Crystallography and Practical Measurement

Axes taken from corner to corner ( coign to coign is the correct terminology ) in a cube are such …

1948, George Hamilton, Herbert Cooke, Geology for South African Students

South of the North American coign we have again a pair of east - west mountain chains

1901, The American Geologist: A Monthly Journal of Geology and Allied Sciences