Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A gauzy film in port and some other wines, indicative of age; hence, sometimes, the wine itself. Also written bee's-wing.
Wiktionary
- n. a filmy, translucent crust found in port and other old wines which have been bottled-aged for a long time
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The second crust formed in port and some other wines after long keeping. It consists of pure, shining scales of tartar, supposed to resemble the wing of a bee.
Etymologies
- From bee + ’s + wing. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“beeswing" sherry, he was aware of all Alan Hawke's intentions.”
“We find in drunkards that the blood vessels get into the same state as the wine bottles from the deposit of earthy matter which has no business to be deposited, and forms the 'beeswing' or crust in the blood vessels of the drunkard, in his eye and in all of the tissues of the body. ”
“All the best to you, and one more small voice beeswing, the lurking reader thinking of you.”
“The last glass filled would be most likely to contain beeswing.”
“In that way all the beeswing would be in the last glass, would it not?”
“The three glasses were grouped together, all of them tinged with wine, and one of them containing some dregs of beeswing.”
“One is that after the second glass was filled the bottle was violently agitated, and so the third glass received the beeswing.”
“Exactly, but there was beeswing only in one glass.”
“The last glass filled would be most likely to contain beeswing.”
“As he raised it to his lips, he held it up against the lamplight, and watched with the eye of a connoisseur the tiny scales of beeswing which floated in its rich ruby depths.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘beeswing’.
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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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so thin!
cotton, filmsy, tenuousic, rarenessly, gruelic, fila(orless)ment, gauzy, slimsy, amnionically, crepeilly, sliverishness, hairlineful and 34 more...
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Days Off
vacation, day off, holiday, hols, furlough, gite, busman's holiday, staycation, honeymoon, babymoon, sick day, PTO and 23 more...
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Outlander series words
A place for me to keep words I found (or found anew) while reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. (Culling my enormous "Learned (or Encountered) in Reading" list.)
gralloch, yeuk, corpse-candle, saprophytic, baldachin, Kermanshah, celandine, tynchal, quaich, mesentery, basidium, dittany and 244 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, B
bloviate, bejesus, brouhaha, behoove, bodacious, bamboozle, banshee, bub, bolus, blob, bubbly, bleb and 414 more...
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Wordnik Notebooks
All the words from the cover of the Wordnik notebook.
A few words appear twice: frass, cruet, luna, thalweg, and possibly some more.
Careful: Contains spoilers!spilth, frass, fomite, rux, worricow, alizarin, mundungus, parthenocarpy, jib, whinyard, weisure, nimiety and 217 more...
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Ute
Durable items invented by Hom. Sap.
alpenhorn, matchbox, plinth, pillow, cantilever, fulcrum, troika, cloverleaf, nib, wheelbarrow, dictabelt, cockpit and 184 more...
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suspendous words
aorta, arteriole, arsis, artery, meteor, aerial, air, aria, malaria, aura, splendor, galore and 40 more...
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feather measures
panache, pinnacle, quill, pinnate, plume, calamus, hackle, fledge, plumule, rachis, vexillum, comatulid and 37 more...
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words to learn
ecclesiarch, decennium, decennary, galactosemia, tautogeneity, quadrature, vellum, wainwright, addax, quadrumane, omnisentient, glyphography and 75 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for beeswing.
hernesheir See also The Bee's Wing, a traditional Northumbrian-style hornpipe melody. Feb 13, 2010
reesetee Interesting! I never realized this was used to describe a "film" that develops on certain types of wine. Jan 27, 2010
chained_bear "... two wine goblets sat on the bench, stained red with beeswing, abandoned remnants of the night's festivities."
—Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross (NY: Bantam Dell, 2001), 735 Jan 26, 2010