CHAPERONNE, or CHAPEROON, properly signifies a sort of hood or covering of the head anciently worn both by men and women, the nobles and the populace, and afterwards appropriated to the doctors, and licentiates in colleges, &c. Hence the name passed to certain little shields, and other funeral devices, placed on the foreheads of the horses that drew the hearsies in pompous funerals, and which are still called chaperoons, or shafferons; because such devices were originally fastened on the chaperonnes, or hoods, worn by those horses with their other coverings of state.

CHAPERON of a bit-mouth, in the manege, is only used for scatch-mouths, and all others that are not cannon-mouths, signifying the end of the bit that joins to the branch just by the banquet. In scatch-mouths the chaperon is round, but in others it is oval; and the same part that in scatch and other mouths is called chaperon, is in cannon-mouths called fronceau.