Definition of "couter"
couter1
noun
plural couters
(historical) A piece of armor which covers the elbow.
Quotations
Full rerebraces enclosed the entire upper arm, with a hinge to allow them to be opened and straps and buckles to fasten them shut. Below the rerebrace was the elbow piece called a couter. The couter was small and conical, often shaped to a point, with a wing on the outer side as on the poleine, and with buckled straps to secure the arm harness snugly to the arm.
2009, Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Will McLean, Daily Life in Chaucer's England, page 169
For example, it is unlikely that the right couter could be damaged or that it could be hit at all if the jouster had a large protective vamplate in place on his lance, though by the same token the folio of the Inventario iluminado on which Real Armeria harness A16 is illustrated (chapter 2, fig. 54) includes six vamplates of varying shapes and sizes for the joust royal so there is no guarantee that such capacious vamplates were used in each and every joust.
2010, Noel Fallows, Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia, page 205