What does "camail" mean?

A piece of chainmail worn to protect the neck and shoulders, replacing the whole-head coif.

What is a synonym for "camail"?

Common synonyms include: aventail, ventail.

Camail

//kəˈmeɪl// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A piece of chainmail worn to protect the neck and shoulders, replacing the whole-head coif. historical
"[…] the hood was increasingly replaced with a mail curtain (the camail or aventail) suspended from the outside of the bascinet, and the bascinet thus augmented gradually replaced the clumsy great helm as the principal defense […]"
2
a medieval hood of mail suspended from a basinet to protect the head and neck wordnet
3
An ecclesiastical ornament worn by bishops. historical

Synonyms

All synonyms

aventail ventail

Example

More examples

"[…] the hood was increasingly replaced with a mail curtain (the camail or aventail) suspended from the outside of the bascinet, and the bascinet thus augmented gradually replaced the clumsy great helm as the principal defense […]"

Etymology

Borrowed in the late 1600s from French camail, from Old Occitan capmalh.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.