CHAPERONNE, or CHAPEROON, properly signifies a sort of hood or covering for 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 hearse in pompous funerals, and which are still called chaperoons or jafferoons; 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 catch-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 catch-mouths the chaperon is round, but in others it is oval; and the same part that in catch and other mouths is called chaperon, is in cannon-mouths called fronceau.