Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A steel cutting tool with a sharp beveled point, used in engraving or carving stone.
- noun A stone tool with a chisellike head.
- noun The style or technique of an engraver's work.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An engravers' tool of tempered steel, with a lozenge-shaped point, fixed in a handle the end of which, held in the hand, is rounded at the top; a graver.
- noun The manner or style of execution of an engraver: as, a soft burin; a brilliant burin.
- noun A steel graver used by marble-workers. Also spelled
burine .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The cutting tool of an engraver on metal, used in line engraving. It is made of tempered steel, one end being ground off obliquely so as to produce a sharp point, and the other end inserted in a handle; a graver; also, the similarly shaped tool used by workers in marble.
- noun The manner or style of execution of an engraver.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
chisel with asharp point , used forengraving ; agraver . - noun A
prehistoric flint tool .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a chisel of tempered steel with a sharp point; used for engraving
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word burin.
Examples
-
Seeing that in the Treatise on the Technique of Painting there was little said of copper-plate engraving, since it was enough at that time to describe the method of engraving silver with the burin, which is a square tool of iron, cut on the slant, with a sharp point, I shall use the occasion of this Life to say as much on that subject as I may consider to be sufficient.
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi Giorgio Vasari 1542
-
A burin was a flaked rock tool with a chisel-like edge probably used to remove flesh from bone.
-
“A burin probably helped engrave the models for the first pennies.”
The Wish Stealers Tracy Trivas 2010
-
“A burin probably helped engrave the models for the first pennies.”
The Wish Stealers Tracy Trivas 2010
-
As if all this weren't enough, the visitor-friendly show also offers wall-panel introductions to each segment in French, Spanish and English, and a small side gallery demonstrating the various techniques of copper-plate engraving -- etching, dry point, burin, aquatint -- and lithography.
-
He carried an engraving block and a burin in his pocket and would ask for work and produce required pictures on the spot.
Mexican lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada: Past and present 2006
-
He carried an engraving block and a burin in his pocket and would ask for work and produce required pictures on the spot.
Mexican lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada: Past and present 2006
-
He carried an engraving block and a burin in his pocket and would ask for work and produce required pictures on the spot.
Mexican lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada: Past and present 2006
-
Tremendous physical force was required to push the metal burin into the flesh of the copper plate, digging out metal with metal, before ink flowed into the resulting grooves, and the plate was run through a press, and the image transferred onto wet paper.
The Art Thief Noah Charney 2007
-
The graving tool, or burin, was of critical importance, for it enabled people to cut strips of fresh reindeer antler to manufacture specialized tools.
G. The Spread of Modern Humans in the Old World (100,000 to 12,000 Years Ago) 2001
jaime_d commented on the word burin
"This incision in his olfactory tract producing a naso-dilation, Cochin profits from it by quickly scarifying Vowl's partition with a surgical pin, scraping it with a burin. . ." Gilbert Adair translation of Georges Perec's La Disparition
August 11, 2010
ruzuzu commented on the word burin
I like this definition from the Century: "The manner or style of execution of an engraver: as, a soft burin; a brilliant burin."
March 14, 2016