Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A red colorant, whose primary constituent is carminic acid, that is made of the dried and pulverized bodies of female cochineal insects and is used to color food and cosmetics.
- noun A vivid red.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A dyestuff consisting of the dried bodies of a species of insects, the Coccus cacti, found upon several species of Opuntia and other Cactaceæ, especially O. Tuna, O. Ficus-Indica, and Nopalea cochinillifera.
- noun The insect which produces the dyestuff known by the same name. See def. 1.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- A dyestuff consisting of the dried bodies of females of the
Coccus cacti , an insect native in Mexico, Central America, etc., and found on several species of cactus, esp.Opuntia cochinellifera .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A species of
insect (Dactylopius coccus). - noun A vivid red
dye made from the bodies of cochineal insects.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a red dyestuff consisting of dried bodies of female cochineal insects
- noun Mexican red scale insect that feeds on cacti; the source of a red dye
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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They'd been growing something called cochineal, which is a-- it was a kind of a-- a bug that grows on
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World 1999
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Or, more properly, the stuff we call cochineal is a chemical extract of carminic acid from the bodies of squished female scale insects.
Bug Girl's Blog 2009
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Red beverages -- including Campari and Tropicana Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice -- are often colored with cochineal, aka carmine, a dye derived from insects.
Anneli Rufus: Are Animals in Your Cocktail? Anneli Rufus 2011
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Red beverages -- including Campari and Tropicana Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice -- are often colored with cochineal, aka carmine, a dye derived from insects.
Anneli Rufus: Are Animals in Your Cocktail? Anneli Rufus 2011
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Red beverages -- including Campari and Tropicana Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice -- are often colored with cochineal, aka carmine, a dye derived from insects.
Anneli Rufus: Are Animals in Your Cocktail? Anneli Rufus 2011
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On the other hand, her version of the pigment known as cochineal red, a concoction made from the carapaces of a certain kind of beetle, eventually achieved an electric intensity that has almost no equal; only the Italian architect Felice della Greca, who worked in Rome in the 1650s, ever mixed cochineal red with oranges and purples in such boldly fluorescent combinations, and he drew buildings and cityscapes rather than insects, birds, and flowers.
The Flowering Genius of Maria Sibylla Merian Rowland, Ingrid D. 2009
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The original goal of Pont's effort to improve a portion of the dye industry was to find an inexpensive solution that would dissolve a greater percentage of the coloring agent in cochineal.
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To accomplish this, the first thing was to obtain a good red ink from the cochineal, which is crimson.
Foul Play Charles Reade 1849
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As the red paint is prepared from cochineal, which is an animal body, less if any injury arises from its use, as it only lies on the skin like other filth.
Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766
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The cochineal is a parasite of cacti of the genus opuntia, from which it has been harvested in South America since pre-Columbian times.
MAKE Magazine Sean Michael Ragan 2010
Prolagus commented on the word cochineal
Note on ladybird.
February 2, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word cochineal
Joseph Banks "placed botanists on voyages scouring for plants in the Arctic, Brazil, Australasia, the West Indies, and Central America. He had tea plants and hemp shipped from China and, with a keen sense of commercial possibilities, he got hold of the Central American host plant for cochineal, the insect from which crimson dye is extracted. Banks believed that species from one tropical location could grow in another, a proposition that was soon to be tested with initially disastrous consequences."
--Joyce Appleby, Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013), p. 202
December 28, 2016
chained_bear commented on the word cochineal
"Animal domestication was not a common phenomenon in ancient Mexico--primarily, it seems, because there were not many species in America suited to that kind of development. Mexicans did, however, show great skill in cultivating insects, including not only cochineal but another form of scale known as Llaveia, which produced a wax used in cosmetics, medicines, and the creation of pre-Columbian lacquer. They also seem to have worked closely with an American honeybee, with butterflies, and with various edible insects.
"Of all these ventures, the cochineal regimen produced the most dramatic and far-reaching results. Over the centuries, the ancient Mexicans' efforts paid off: under their care, a new species of cochineal flourished, a species now known to scientists as Dactylopius coccus. The new insect was twice the size of the wild varieties and produced considerably more dye; it may also have yielded a slightly more vibrant red. There was, however, a trade-off. Unlike wild cochineal, whose cottonlike nest allowed it to survive freezing temperatures and altitudes over 8,000 feet, the domesticated insect had only a thin coat of powdery wax on its back, leaving it extremely vulnerable to the elements. When exposed to frost or to a sustained heatwave, Dactylopius coccus often died. Nor could it tolerate constant rain and high humidity. Indeed, it was so delicate that an ill-timed shower could do it in.
"What Dactylopius coccus liked best was the climate where it had been bred: the warm, dry climate of the southern Mexican highlands, where temperatures generally hovered between fifty and eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit."
Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 37.
See also comment on grana cochinilla, which will lead you to uchimillia if you want to skip the middleman.
October 5, 2017