Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A yellow pigment of various degrees of intensity, approaching also to red.
  • noun (Bot.) The orpine.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A yellow pigment of various degrees of intensity, sometimes approaching red.
  • noun botany The orpine.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun perennial northern temperate plant with toothed leaves and heads of small purplish-white flowers

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French, orpiment, also, the plant orpine. See orpiment.

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Examples

  • "Fourthly, that the first of these liquors in a mixture of the alkali and igneous parts of quick-lime with the sulphureous substance of arsenick; for the orpin is a sort of arsenick, as I said before.

    Forty Centuries of Ink 1904

  • "This last effect does likewise proceed from the defacing liquor; for because upon the digestion of quicklime and orpin, it is a thing impossible for some of the particles will exalt, stop the vessel as close as you will; the air impregnated with these little bodies does mix with, and alter the inks, insomuch that the visible ink does thereby become the less black, and the invisible ink does also acquire a little blackness."

    Forty Centuries of Ink 1904

  • In choral ser - vice when I liear — the pcalini; orpin blow To llio full-toiccil clioir beiuw I: i srr\icc liiL, h: inJ aiilhcm clear/

    The Countess and Gertrude; Or, Modes of Discipline Laetitia Matilda Hawkins 1812

  • "There is one thing more to be observed, which is, that the infusion of quick-lime and orpin be newly made, because otherwise it will not have force enough to penetrate.

    Forty Centuries of Ink 1904

  • "These operations are liquors of a different nature, which do destroy one another; the first is an infusion of quick-lime and orpin; the second a water turn'd black by means of burned cork; and the third is a vinegar impregnated with saturn.

    Forty Centuries of Ink 1904

  • "Dip a little cotton in the first liquor made of lime and orpin, but the liquor must be first settled and clear; rub the place you writ upon with this cotton and that which appeared will presently disappear, and that which was not seen will appear.

    Forty Centuries of Ink 1904

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