coronete

Coronet is the diminutive of the Old French corone, from the Latin corōna (crown, wreath), from the Greek korṓnē (anything curved). A coronet is literally a 'little crown.' The diminutive was not decorative — it encoded rank. In the British system, only the sovereign wears a crown. Everyone else wears a coronet, and the design of each coronet is legally specified according to rank.

The distinctions are precise and medieval in their specificity. A duke's coronet has eight strawberry leaves. A marquess has four strawberry leaves alternating with four silver balls. An earl has eight strawberry leaves alternating with eight silver balls, the leaves raised on points. A viscount has sixteen silver balls. A baron has six silver balls. Getting this wrong was not a fashion error — it was a claim to a rank you did not hold.

Coronets are worn at coronations. The last time the entire British peerage wore coronets simultaneously was the coronation of Charles III in May 2023. Before that, it was Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953. The objects spend decades in safes and vaults, brought out for a single ceremony. Some peers have theirs made fresh because the old ones deteriorated or were sold.

Outside heraldry, coronet has softened into a general word for any small, decorative crown. Coronet Peak in New Zealand, Coronet Bay in Australia — the word has shed its legal weight in geographic names. But in the Court of the Lord Lyon in Scotland and the College of Arms in England, a coronet is still a legal instrument of rank, as precise and regulated as a passport.