‖ œil-de-bœuf
(œjdəbœf)
[F., lit. ‘ox-eye’, term for a round window, etc.]
1. A small round window: = bull's-eye 6.
| 1849 Thackeray Pendennis xxv, Take a peep at the ladies in the hall through an œil-de-bœuf. |
2. The name of a small octagonal vestibule lighted by a small round window in the palace at Versailles; hence transf. and fig.
| 1826 Scott Woodst. xii, This movement conveyed him to a sort of œil-de-bœuf, an octagon vestibule, or small hall, from which various rooms opened. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. I. iii. i, To govern France were such a problem; and now it has grown well-nigh too hard to govern even the Œil-de-Bœuf. 1862 Wraxall tr. Mem. Q. Hortense II. iv. 57 The royalist gentry had preserved the manners and levity which had once distinguished them in the œils de bœuf and petites maisons of old France. |