Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A green, crystalline heptahydrate mineral of ferrous sulfate, FeSO4·7H2O.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Green vitriol, the sulphate of iron, or ferrous sulphate, FeSO4.7H2O, a salt of a peculiar astringent taste and of various colors, green, gray, yellowish, or whitish, but more usually green.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Green vitriol, or sulphate of iron; a green crystalline substance, of an astringent taste, used in making ink, in dyeing black, as a tonic in medicine, etc. It is made on a large scale by the oxidation of iron pyrites. Called also
ferrous sulphate .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Ferrous sulfate .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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At Walton-under-the-Naze they find on the shore copperas-stone in great quantities; and there are several large works called copperas houses, where they make it with great expense.
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At Walton-under-the-Naze they find on the shore copperas-stone in great quantities; and there are several large works called copperas houses, where they make it with great expense.
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Though often a brilliant colored mineral, it is neither gold nor copper; but it may be associated with one or both of them, as found in North Carolina, and it is valuable of itself, being easily converted into copperas, which is sulphate of iron.
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Sulphuric acid has also been supposed to be sometimes an ingredient of peat -- which combining with iron, (always present,) would favor sulphate of iron, or copperas, which is a poison to useful plants.
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At Walton-under-the-Naze they find on the shore copperas-stone in great quantities; and there are several large works called copperas houses, where they make it with great expense.
Tour through Eastern Counties of England, 1722 Daniel Defoe 1696
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Another substance which has been found to have an injurious action is ferrous sulphate or "copperas," a substance which is apt to be present in badly drained soils, or soils in which there is much actively putrefying organic matter.
Manures and the principles of manuring Charles Morton Aikman
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Other substances also have been examined, such as copperas ores from various parts of the State; numerous specimens supposed to be, or contain, saltpetre, but mostly containing only Epsom or Glauber's Salt.
Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863 Mississippi. Legislature. House of Representatives 1862
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I drank wine of immoral bouquet: sea foam, midday drizzle, ash of poppies, copperas, mustard.
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I drank wine of immoral bouquet: sea foam, midday drizzle, ash of poppies, copperas, mustard.
Archive 2009-02-01 2009
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An odor of copperas issued in puffs from the roofs of the neighboring factory.
Les Miserables 2008
chained_bear commented on the word copperas
"A mixture—three pounds copperas, one pint of carbolic acid, one bucket of water—ran through the alleyways and cesspools for cleansing."
—Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague (New York: Berkeley Books, 2006), 57
October 5, 2008
knitandpurl commented on the word copperas
"To prepare the fastest blue, for example, you would need an English vat containing 'five times one hundred and twelve pounds of the best woad, five pounds of umbro madder, one peck of cornell and bran, the refuse of wheat, four pounds of copperas, and a quarter of a peck of dry slacked lime.'"
Mauve by Simon Garfield (quoting William Partridge), p 42 of the Norton paperback edition
March 30, 2012
fbharjo commented on the word copperas
as in bronzed-blue-soothe-sooth-to add lustration
March 30, 2012
chained_bear commented on the word copperas
"De Saussure reckoned that 'more grain is consumed in England for making beer than for making bread', much of it clarified with isinglass or adulterated with dangerous copperas (ferrous sulphate) to make its head froth 'like a cauliflower'."
--Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 222
See also usage/historical note in comment on adulteration.
January 18, 2017