bars humettee

The bar is a thin, horizontal stripe across the centre of the shield, usually in groups of two or three (any more and there would be confusion with barry, a treatment of horizontal lines of alternating colours). Humettee is a word of uncertain origin that means couped or cut. It is applied to so-called ordinaries, the large features that typically extend across the whole of the field, but their description as humettee means that, whilst still occupying the bulk of the space, they are cut short before reaching the edge A Glossary of Terms used in British Heraldry, J.H. Parker, Oxford, 1894, Entry:Humetty. Thus the bar humettee is one of small number of horizontal bars ending just short of either edge. Richard II of England granted an example of these in the arms of John de DABRICHECOURT, being Ermine, on 3 bars humetty 9 escallops or 3,3,3.