the.com/poleyn
the medieval knee guard that let armored men kneel without snapping like a lobster.
means A poleyn is a piece of plate armor designed to cover and protect the knee joint, often strapped over mail or attached to the leg harness.
from From Old French 'polain' or 'poulain,' a diminutive ultimately tracing back to Latin 'polleo'-related forms isn't certain; more reliably it descends from Old French words for the knee region, cousins to the same Romance roots that gave English 'poignant' and 'pommel' a knack for naming hard little protrusions. The word rode into English with the rest of the medieval armorer's vocabulary, when French was the language of knights and the parts of a harness each earned their own crisp name.
- job
- Protected the vulnerable knee joint in plate armor
- name root
- From Old French for knee, genou
- design trick
- Often hinged or fluted to allow bending
- era
- Peaked in 14th and 15th century Europe
- side wing
- A fan-shaped fin guarded the inner knee
henry viii's poleyn armor — greenwich armor made ~1520 for english king, preserved at metropolitan museum
fluted poleyn maximilian style — german armor from holy roman empire 1500s, characteristic ridged knee defense