Estramaçon (French)

A blow or cut with a sword, hence also “estramaconner,” to play at backsword. Sir Walter Scott uses the word in the sense of a feint or pretended cut. Hence Sir Jeffrey Hudson, the dwarf, says:—

“I tripped a hasty morris … upon the dining, table, now offering my sword [to the Duke of Buckingham], and now recovering it, I made … a sort of estramaçon at his nose, the dexterity of which consists in coming mightily near to the object without touching it.”—Peveril of the Peak, chap. xxxiv.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.