crants

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   obsolete: a garland or wreath, especially one carried before a maiden's bier and afterward hung over her grave

   Lucy imagined herself like Ophelia, with virgin crants and maiden strewments.

Borrowed from Dutch krans ("garland or wreath"), with related German Kranz. The obsolete English word is best known from Shakespeare's Hamlet in the phrase "virgin crants," describing the funeral garlands allowed to an unmarried woman.

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