Ouch - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

OUCH, a brooch, clasp or buckle, especially one ornamented with jewels, enamels, &c., and used to clasp a cope or other ecclesiastical vestment. It is also used, as in Exod. xxxix. 6, of the gold or silver setting of jewels. The word is an example of the misdivision of a substantive and the indefinite article, being properly "nouche," "a nouche" being divided into "an ouche," as a napron into an apron, a nadder into an adder, and, reversely, an ewt, i.e. eft, into a newt. "Nouche" was adapted into 0. Fr., whence English took the word, from the Late Lat. nusca, brooch; probably the original is Celtic, cf. O. Irish nasc, ring, nasgaim, fasten.