**Blazoning** is the formal description of an heraldic design in the precise technical language of heraldry. A blazon names the tinctures, ordinaries and charges of a shield or flag in a fixed order, so that the design can be reconstructed exactly from the words alone. Where a flag carries an heraldic device, its blazon is often the legally authoritative description, with the depicted image being a representation rather than the definition.
**Example**: The blazon of the Royal Banner of Scotland is ‘Or, a lion rampant Gules armed and langued Azure, within a double tressure flory counter-flory of the second’.
**See also**: [tincture](/glossary/tincture/), [charge](/glossary/charge/), [dexter](/glossary/dexter/), [quartered](/glossary/quartered/)