Definition of "bezant" []

• See solidus. (noun)
• Architecture A flat disk used as an ornament. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The excellence of Byzantine administration—hardly Byzantine at all by our usage—is nowhere clearer than in the power of the Byzantine standard gold coin, the solidus known as the bezant in medieval Europe."
• "A small loaf of bread cost a bezant of gold, and of the price of wine I shall not speak; there was not even a jug of it."
• "It gave us the Creeds, the bezant and the fork, it introduced us to both silk and caviar, which was once a poor people's food."