Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of the color of a ruby; red.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Red.

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

  • adjective obsolete Red; ruddy.

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

  • adjective obsolete red; ruddy

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin rubeus, from rubere to be red. See rouge.

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Examples

  • "Luncheon" clinched for me what "tessellated" and "rubious" had clinched for him: he was certainly a fellow inhabitant from our distant galaxy.

    Beard 2010

  • And here am I, as if a maiden princess were I, demanding romantic accessories of rubious vapour in the man condescending to implore the widow to wed him.

    Diana of the Crossways — Volume 5 George Meredith 1868

  • And here am I, as if a maiden princess were I, demanding romantic accessories of rubious vapour in the man condescending to implore the widow to wed him.

    Diana of the Crossways — Complete George Meredith 1868

  • And here am I, as if a maiden princess were I, demanding romantic accessories of rubious vapour in the man condescending to implore the widow to wed him.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith George Meredith 1868

  • Olivia falls in love with the disguised Viola, who has developed a secret passion for Orsino, who almost seems attracted to his strangely feminine new servant (whose face, he brightly observes, is "smooth and rubious," and whose voice is "as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound").

    BroadwayWorld.com Featured Content 2009

  • Some mode of defence is necessary to counteract and defeat these rubious prac - tices, to prevent this illicit trade and intercourse, and to stop the inroads and incursions of the pretended loyalists.

    Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1792

  • Just beyond the good "sister" stood a young man, poring over a piece of paper, which had the appearance of a medical prescription: a spirited-looking youth, whose harmonious and intellectual cast of features was heightened to rare beauty by richly mellow coloring, and the silken curves of a beard and moustache unprofaned by a razor, -- curves softly traced above the fresh, rubious lips, and gracefully deepening about the cheeks and chin, -- curves that disappear forever when the civilized barbarism of shaving has been accepted.

    Fairy Fingers A Novel Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie 1844

  • 283: Is not more smooth, and rubious: thy small pipe

    Twelfth Night (1623 First Folio Edition) 1623

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