List of Heraldic Charges - "Subordinary" Charges

"Subordinary" Charges

A few simple charges are traditionally, and arbitrarily, classified among the subordinaries. (All other mobile charges are called common charges.)

A lozenge is a rhombus, similar to the diamond of playing-cards (though its sides are never concave). A narrower lozenge may be called a fusil. A mascle is a lozenge voided, i.e. with a lozenge-shaped hole; a rustre is a lozenge pierced, i.e. with a round hole.

A billet is a rectangle, sometimes representing a sheet of paper or a piece of firewood. Its long side is normally vertical.

• a billet with ends splayed in three points appears in the arms of Khienburg.
• It is important to distinguish the billet from the delf, a square charge that when occurring singly, in one of the stainard colours and when not itself charged, in supposed to be an abatement. Sometimes the delf is euphemised as a "square billet."
• The delf is distinguished in terminology if not in form from the square, which rarely occurs, the arms of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada including "a square... joined at each corner with a smaller square Vert". But the more usual use of the term square in heraldry is for the carpenter's square. The gad must be distinguished from all of these.

A circular ring is called an annulet; a solid circle is called a roundel.