What does courant mean?
Courant is a term from heraldry describing an animal depicted as if running at full speed, shown in profile with all four legs extended. It appears most often in the formal written description of a coat of arms—the blazon—where phrases such as 'a stag courant' or 'a hart courant' specify both the creature and its dynamic pose. The word contrasts with other heraldic postures such as couchant (lying down with head raised), statant (standing still), and salient (leaping), giving designers a vocabulary for capturing motion on a static shield. Borrowed directly from French courant, meaning 'running', it ultimately derives from the Latin verb currere, 'to run'—the same root that gives us words like current, course, and cursive. Though courant once had broader English uses as an adjective meaning running or flowing, today it survives almost entirely within heraldic language, where precision of posture carries symbolic weight.
A heraldic term for an animal represented as running at full speed with all legs extended.
"The grant of arms depicts a wolf courant above a fess."
Used within blazons; the term applies to the depiction rather than being a standalone noun in general discourse.
(Archaic) Running or flowing; current.
"News of the victory came courant through the city."
This sense is obsolete or nearly so; it survives mainly in historical texts.
On a coat of arms, 'courant' means the animal is frozen mid-gallop—an entire chase captured in a single painted moment.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of courant
Courant comes directly from the present participle of the French verb courir, meaning 'to run', which itself descends from the Latin currere. It entered English through heraldic terminology, where French was long the language of blazon, and it retains that French flavour in pronunciation. Its Latin root also underlies English cognates such as current, course, corridor, and cursive, all of which carry the underlying idea of movement or flow. An early modern English adjectival use meaning simply 'running' or 'in progress' has largely disappeared, leaving heraldry as the word's principal surviving domain.
How courant is actually used
Courant is almost exclusively encountered in heraldry and its terminology, appearing in formal descriptions (blazons) of coats of arms. Outside that specialised context it is rare and largely historical; an adjective sense meaning 'running' or 'current' existed in early modern English but has fallen out of use.
Easily confused with courant
Couchant describes an animal lying down with head raised, the opposite posture to courant's full-speed run.