Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, relating to, or resembling the amaranth.
- adj. Eternally beautiful and unfading; everlasting.
- adj. Deep purple-red.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to the amaranth; consisting of, containing, or resembling amaranth.
- Never-fading, like the amaranth of the poets; imperishable.
- Of a purplish color. Also written amarantine.
Wiktionary
- n. A dark reddish purple colour.
- adj. Of a dark reddish purple colour
- adj. unfading, eternal, immortal, infinite
- adj. relating to the imaginary amaranth flower that never fades
- adj. relating to, or having the form of plants of the genus Amaranthus
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of or pertaining to amaranth.
- adj. Unfading, as the poetic amaranth; undying.
- adj. Of a purplish color.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or related to the amaranth plant
- adj. of an imaginary flower that never fades
Etymologies
- From amaranth, referring to the color of the flowers (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The word amaranthine indicates both eternal, unfading beauty and (as related to the flower) a deep purple-red, and at least on me, Amaranthine is close to eternal - I get a good 24 to 36 hours of fun, and I wouldn't want to overspray.”
“John deBrun did not recollect his past, and his amaranthine youth reflected that time itself neglected him from its memory even as it left its noticeable mark on everyone else.”
“Think of it as the Long Tail of Friendship—in the age of queue-able social priorities, Twitter-able status updates, and amaranthine cloud memory, keeping friends requires almost no effort at all.”
“The combo of EMI and Warner Music would boast a horde of chart-topping musicians like Coldplay, amaranthine songstress Madonna and rapper Eminem.”
“As we trooped out of St. Peter's basilica that day, spreading our amaranthine stain over the great parvis, a palpable euphoria thrilled through the entire body.”
“I had heard of the famous tapestries of Guermantes, I could see them, mediaeval and blue, a trifle coarse, detach themselves like a floating cloud from the legendary, amaranthine name at the foot of the ancient forest in which”
“Eleanor wanted to assure her Elm Creek Manor was not some mean farmhouse, but even more, she wanted to shake her mother and ask her how she could be so blind to the amaranthine sky, the rolling green hills, the lush forests that in autumn would be ablaze with color, breathtaking in their beauty.”
“Beyond that could be seen the shadowy shapes of other islands in the Dodecanese and, in the sharp light of winter, even the amaranthine undulations of the Turkish coast forty miles away.”
“Not even a tropical paradise, with its warm, glowing sky and balmy atmosphere, its "ambrosial fruits and amaranthine flowers," could charm us into oblivion of home, and those who made it dear; or diminish the bitterness of the thought of being cut off for ever from human intercourse, and of having all our plans of life deranged and frustrated.”
“But _Love_ is the elastic, all-embracing band, which, wreathed with amaranthine flowers, endures when time shall be no more!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘amaranthine’.
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 330 more...
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Rare Words - A
Not just rare words, but thousands of RARE WORDS WITH DEFINITIONS.
If you want to see the definitions, too, go to
http://phrontistery.i...aba, abacinate, abactor, abaculus, abaft, abampere, abapical, abarticular, abasement, abasia, abask, abatis and 1214 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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phrontistery - a
from phrontistery.info
aba, abacinate, abactor, abaculus, abaft, abampere, abasia, abask, abb, abba, abbatial, abra and 1214 more...
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Stick Around
annotine, lasting, durable, everlasting, permanence, stable, abiding, immortal, hibernaculum, continual, dwelling-place, abiding-place and 57 more...
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Sound Sex
taciturn, deflower, recursive, parapraxis, comitative, atelic, awkward, eccentric, libidinous, astereognosis, aloof, moonglade and 50 more...
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Wordsthatcouldbeusedinmyth
bicephalous, invertebrate, amaranthine, befuddle, browbeat, expurgation, bigoted, groan, telic, untoward, mummer, formalist and 17 more...
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O So Zhinsky!
zarf, liripipe, theandric, tazza, bobeche, autotelic, gonfalon, refulgent, crepuscular, caduceus, knop, labarum and 46 more...
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difficult words
ordure, tatterwallop, callipygian, odious, colophon, cynosure, hardener, emollience, valetudinarian, demonym, volage, polysemantic and 260 more...
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Potpourri
eponymous, aa, pulchritude, gizmo, macabre, sui generis, solecism, solipsism, eldritch, samizdat, queue, obsequious and 469 more...
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Colors
Words for colors, including things so associated with a color that they can be used in reference to a color.
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, purple, navy, lavender, turquoise, chartreuse and 218 more...
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Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
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There's a word for that?
temerity, tacit, froward, faineant, caterwaul, menagerie, ennui, sine qua non, lissom, multifarious, laconic, katzenjammer and 240 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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play words
words for a play
pert, vicissitude, melancholy, vexation, gaud, attestation, renunciation, wax, wrought, sunder, antipodes, reckoning and 236 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for amaranthine.
milosrdenstvi What time the poet hath hymned
The writhing maid, lithe-limbed,
Quivering on amaranthine asphodel,
How can he paint her woes,
Knowing, as well he knows,
That all can be set right with calomel?
-- Bunthorne, the Aesthetic Poet, in W.S. Gilbert's Patience Aug 20, 2008
knitandpurl "But in order that I should not be disappointed by the words that I should hear uttered by a person who called herself Mme de Guermantes, even if I had not been in love with her, it would not have sufficed that those words be shrewd, beautiful, and profound, they would have had to reflect that amaranthine colour of the closing syllable of her name, that colour which on first seeing her I had been disappointed not to find in her person and had fancied as having taken refuge in her mind."
--The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 280 of the Modern Library paperback edition Aug 10, 2008
mollusque Thanks oroboros! I hadn't heard of antanaclasis and it's close to what I seek. The only difference seems to be that in antanaclasis the word with a double meaning is repeated. I'd been toying with polysemy also, but that seems to refer to different meanings in different contexts. Maybe what I want is "merged antanaclasis" or "simultaneous polysemy". Nov 22, 2007
oroboros Mollusque:
"It is indeed a kind of pun called the ANTANACLASIS (an-ta-NA-cla-sis), or double entendre. Not the joking, play-on-words kind of pun, the antanaclasis strikes a rhetorical chord, causing the word to vibrate with its double meaning -- a bicorn, if you will."
--From: Ask Figaro (figarospeech.com) Nov 22, 2007
seanahan The closest I can think of would be to say bon mot, but it doesn't describe this specific situation. Nov 4, 2007
mollusque In The Last Unicorn, Peter Beagle described the unicorn as having amarathine eyes. This uses both meanings of amarathine simultaneously (undying and a purple color) without it being a pun or zeugma. Is there a word for this literary device? Nov 4, 2007