pendant

Ornament suspended from a bracelet, earring, or necklace and derived from the primitive practice of wearing amulets or talismans around the neck. The practice dates from the Stone Age, when pendants consisted of objects such as teeth, stones, and shells. Commemorative and decorative pendants were common in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In the Middle Ages reliquaries, or devotional pendants, and crosses were created with jewels. By the beginning of the 16th century, Renaissance artists were creating pendants for decorative rather than religious use. The late 19th-century Art Nouveau movement often featured women's figures, butterflies, or flowers on pendants.

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A pendant (from Old French) is a hanging object, generally attached to a necklace or an earring. In modern French this is a word meaning “during” (also the gerund form of "hanging"). Pendants can have several functions:

• ornamentation
• identification (i.e. religious symbols, sexual symbols, symbols of rock bands)
• protection (i.e. amulets, religious symbols)
• self-affirmation (i.e. initials, names)
• ostentation (i.e. jewels).
• award (i.e Scouting Ireland Chief Scout's Award, Order of CúChulainn)

These purposes can be combined (i.e. a richly jewelled symbol).

Other meanings

• A teach pendant is a portable control device used in industrial robotics.
• A cable pendant is one of a series of cables that is horizontally suspended across a flight deck of aircraft carriers for aircraft to land by catching with tailhook.
• A nautical pendant is a length of cable or rope, usually of a short length, that has eyes or fittings, or both, at the ends for attachment to vessels and bollards or buoys.
• A pendant is a common item used in hypnosis.