breastplate (brestplat)

[ME. brestplate; Breastplate, 16th century; steel ornamented with gilding, and bearing a coat of arms on the breast. (From "L'Art pour Tous.") secured to the four corners. It was also called the breastplate of judg. ment, because it contained the Urim and the Thummim. 2. The armor for the front of the body, when made in one piece reaching from the waist to about the collar-bone. It was not introduced until a very late masonry, almost touching the periphery of the wheel and extending from the bottom of the sluice to near the low est point of the wheel. If the water is admitted to the wheel at a point very near its summit and on the same side as the sluice, it is called a pitch -back wheel. breast-wood (brest'wud), n. In hort., the shoots of fruit-trees which grow out from the front of the branches trained on espaliers or against walls.