Emily Dickinson Lexicon

AN'CO-NY, n. [Probably from αγκων, the cubit, from its resemblance to the arm.]

In iron works, a piece of half wrought iron, in the shape of a bar in the middle, but rude and unwrought at the ends. A piece of cast iron is melted off and hammered at a forge, into a mass of two feet long and square, which is called a bloom; then, carried to a finery, and worked into an ancony; it is then sent to a chafery, where the ends are wrought into the shape of the middle, and the whole is made into a bar. – Encyc.