crapaudine

noun8

1. •
   A method of preparing fowl and poultry, where the back is split apart and the bird is flattened down the breast, looking somewhat like a toad; spatchcock.

   • “Chicken cutlets,” said she, “or crapaudine, and some serniki — only let them be as good as they were last night. — 1861
2. •
   A form of torture in which the hands and feet are tied together behind the back, forcing the victim's body to bow, and sometimes accompanied by additional forms of torture, such as suspending the body by the point where the hands and feet are tied or beating.

   • After several more hours of the crapaudine, the two prisoners were cut down and left chained hand and foot on the ground, exposed to sun, rain, and mosquitoes for twenty-nine days. — 2000
3. •
   A type of piquant sauce flavored with tarragon, lemon or vinegar, and other spices, that is traditionally served with a fowl cooked in the crapaudine style.

   • This includes the familiar Bearnaise and tartar sauces, as well as more mysterious sounding ones, like crapaudine (froglike) sauce, which is served with rabbit. — 2015
4. •
   An heirloom variety of beet originating in France, and considered possibly the oldest beet cultivar.

   • The true type of the crapaudine is 4 inches broad at the superior part, and becomes very regularly thinner until it reaches the length of 11 inches, which is the average. — 1882
5. •
   A toadstone.

   • A HORN RING, very massive, with a silver bezel, set with a crapaudine, XIVth Century. It was found near Richmond, in Yorkshire. — 1863
6. •
   (rare) The socket in which the pivot of a door turns.

   • A stone door socket (Crapaudine C), associated with a small patch of brick pavement and a large slab of stone forming the threshold of a doorway, was uncovered at a depth of 1.25 m . below surface. — 1965
7. •
   A device for calibrating a pendulum consisting of a dilatable plate that produces an artificial tilt of a clinometer.

   • This is accomplished by a device patterned after the crapaudine (Verbaandert & Melchior 1958) used to calibrate horizontal pendulums. — 1973
8. •
   (no longer used) An ulcer on the coronet of a horse, sheep, or donkey.

   • As Spang elaborated: A “crapaud” was a toad and a “crapaudine” was a disease of sheep, so what did that make “pigeon a la crapaudine”? — 2018