Definition of "coat of arms" []

• Heraldry A tabard or surcoat blazoned with bearings. (noun)
• An arrangement of bearings, usually depicted on and around a shield, that indicates ancestry and distinctions. (noun)
• A representation of bearings. (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.

• "A Swiss émigré artist, Pierre-Eugène du Simitière, was invited to contribute his own suggestions and came up with a democratic coat of arms that combined the emblems of various nations—Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and France—from which the American immigrants had come."
• "In England, Arnold revived his family coat of arms with its lion crest, but in place of the old motto, “My Glory is on high,” he chose (from an ode of Horace), “Nil desperandum” (“Never despair”)."
• "At ten oclock, I drove through M&Cs grand gates where the motto of the English founders, Far and Sure, is still visible on the coat of arms and checked in with Doris, who had the shadow over her on that morning, and who made me feel as welcome as a hemorrhoid."