LOZENGE, in Heraldry, a four-cornered figure, resembling a pane of glass in old casements. Though all heralds agree that single ladies are to place their arms on lozenges, yet they differ with respect to the causes which gave rise to it. Plutarch says, in the life of Theseus, that in Megara, an ancient town of Greece, the tombstones under which the bodies of the Amazons lay were shaped after that form, which some conjecture to be the cause why ladies have their arms on lozenges. Petra Sancta conceives this shield to represent a cushion, whereupon women used to sit and spin, or do other housewifery; but Ferne thinks that it is formed from the shield called tessera, which the Romans, finding unfit for war, allowed to women to place their ensigns upon, with one of its angles always uppermost.