Ermine is a
heraldicHeraldry is the profession, study, or art of devising, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound *harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
fur representing the winter coat of the
stoatErmine has several meanings:-* A common name for the stoat * The white fur and black tail end of this animal, which is historically worn by and associated with royalty and high officials...
(white with a black tail). Many skins would be sewn together to make a luxurious garment, producing a pattern of small black spots on a white field. The conventional representation of the tails (commonly called
ermine spots) is part of the tincture itself, rather than a pattern of charges, though the ermine spot is also used as a single charge (often as a mark of
cadencyIn heraldry, cadency is any systematic way of distinguishing similar coats of arms belonging to members of the same family. Cadency is necessary in heraldic systems in which a given design may be owned by only one person at once...
).
Ermine is a
heraldicHeraldry is the profession, study, or art of devising, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound *harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
fur representing the winter coat of the
stoatErmine has several meanings:-* A common name for the stoat * The white fur and black tail end of this animal, which is historically worn by and associated with royalty and high officials...
(white with a black tail). Many skins would be sewn together to make a luxurious garment, producing a pattern of small black spots on a white field. The conventional representation of the tails (commonly called
ermine spots) is part of the tincture itself, rather than a pattern of charges, though the ermine spot is also used as a single charge (often as a mark of
cadencyIn heraldry, cadency is any systematic way of distinguishing similar coats of arms belonging to members of the same family. Cadency is necessary in heraldic systems in which a given design may be owned by only one person at once...
). The ermine spot has had a wide variety of shapes over the centuries; its most usual representation has three tufts at the end (bottom), converges to a point at the root (top), and is attached by three studs.
On a
bend ermine, the tails follow the line of the bend. In
the arms of William John Uncles, the field ermine is cut into bendlike strips by the three bendlets azure, so the ermine tails are (unusually) depicted bendwise.
Ermines is the reverse of ermine – a field sable semé of ermine-spots argent. It is sometimes called
counter-ermine (cf.
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
contre-hermin and
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
Gegenhermelin).
Erminois is ermine with a field Or instead of argent, and
pean is the reverse of erminois (
i.e. Or spots on a field sable).
Erminites is supposed to be the "same as ermine, except that the two lateral hairs of each spot are red." James Parker mentions it, as does Pimbley, though by the former's admission this is of doubtful existence. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies describes it as a "silly [invention] of former heraldic writers, not of former heralds."
Other combinations of
tincturesIn heraldry, tinctures are the colours used to emblazon a coat of arms. These can be divided into several categories including light tinctures called metals, dark tinctures called colours, nonstandard colours called stains, furs, and "proper". A charge tinctured proper is coloured as it would be...
are explicitly stated, as in "gules ermined argent" (red with white ermine spots).