sconce

He flings his lunch against the wall, shattering a piece of Nancy Reagan’s china and leaving a trail of ketchup and hamburger grease on the wallpaper and faux gilt sconce recently procured from Home Depot.

From Salon ● Nov. 23, 2025

Upstairs in the living room, she repainted window frames, switched out a wall sconce, and added a projector screen.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 7, 2024

Stenciled onto the adjacent wall next to an incongruously glowing sconce is eternity’s conundrum: “Heaven for weather, hell for company.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 30, 2022

From lighting in its Delta collection, a discrete sconce of two moon-like discs, one reflective and the other in eclipse, illuminates the entry.

From New York Times ● Jun. 30, 2022

The African king halted beside her, thinking she was unwell, and indeed the light of the flaring sconce above her did throw ghastly shadows over her face.

From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman

Mohammed Hatta was comfortably en sconced with him in Batavia as his vice president.

From Time Magazine Archive

Have you secured The all-important Crossways?—safely sconced Yourself at Quatre-Bras?

From The Dynasts by Thomas Hardy

Those round this way Are his left wing with Ney, that face the north Between Paunsdorf and Gohlis.—Thus, you see They are skilfully sconced within the villages, With cannon ranged in front.

From The Dynasts by Thomas Hardy

In the pamphlet it is "sconced"; that very common old word for fined or mulcted.

From A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I by David Eugene Smith

In winter, warmed by the ruddy blaze of a generous fire, and well sconced, and filled with pleasant company seated about a well-spread board, the room might have passed muster and even conduced to ease.

From The Abbess Of Vlaye by Stanley J. Weyman

The penalty of "sconcing," still inflicted at Oxford, for offences against undergraduate etiquette, finds a place in the Parisian statutes among serious punishments.

From Life in the Medieval University by Robert S. Rait