A piece of light armor covering the torso; a short corselet as distinguished from a full breastplate.
From French 'corselet,' diminutive of 'corse' (body/corselet), derived from Old French and Latin 'corpus.' The '-let' suffix indicates something smaller or shorter than a full corselet.
Medieval soldiers had a whole vocabulary for armor pieces, and 'corselet' occupied a specific middle ground—too heavy to be cloth, too light to be full plate armor. It was practical for the budget-conscious knight.
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