Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A steel cutting tool with a sharp beveled point, used in engraving or carving stone. Also called graver.
- n. The style or technique of an engraver's work.
- n. Archaeology A stone tool with a chisellike head. Also called graver.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An engravers' tool of tempered steel, with a lozenge-shaped point, fixed in a handle the end of which, held in the hand, is rounded at the top; a graver. Pushed forward by the hand in any desired direction, it cuts a shallow or deep furrow, according to the pressure exerted. When, as in etching, bitten lines, or lines made with the dry-point, are imperfect or weak, the burin is used to repair or strengthen them.
- n. The manner or style of execution of an engraver: as, a soft burin; a brilliant burin.
- n. A steel graver used by marble-workers. Also spelled burine.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The cutting tool of an engraver on metal, used in line engraving. It is made of tempered steel, one end being ground off obliquely so as to produce a sharp point, and the other end inserted in a handle; a graver; also, the similarly shaped tool used by workers in marble.
- n. The manner or style of execution of an engraver.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a chisel of tempered steel with a sharp point; used for engraving
Etymologies
- From French (Wiktionary)
- French, probably from obsolete Italian burino, of Germanic origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Seeing that in the Treatise on the Technique of Painting there was little said of copper-plate engraving, since it was enough at that time to describe the method of engraving silver with the burin, which is a square tool of iron, cut on the slant, with a sharp point, I shall use the occasion of this Life to say as much on that subject as I may consider to be sufficient.”
“A burin was a flaked rock tool with a chisel-like edge probably used to remove flesh from bone.”
““A burin probably helped engrave the models for the first pennies.””
“He carried an engraving block and a burin in his pocket and would ask for work and produce required pictures on the spot.”
Mexican lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada: Past and present
“As if all this weren't enough, the visitor-friendly show also offers wall-panel introductions to each segment in French, Spanish and English, and a small side gallery demonstrating the various techniques of copper-plate engraving -- etching, dry point, burin, aquatint -- and lithography.”
“Tremendous physical force was required to push the metal burin into the flesh of the copper plate, digging out metal with metal, before ink flowed into the resulting grooves, and the plate was run through a press, and the image transferred onto wet paper.”
“The graving tool, or burin, was of critical importance, for it enabled people to cut strips of fresh reindeer antler to manufacture specialized tools.”
G. The Spread of Modern Humans in the Old World (100,000 to 12,000 Years Ago)
“Some needed both hands and feet, if they used a burin-wheel for carving gems; and these, lest they should slip off untraced, had had their noses taken.”
“Passing from the bloom of Nature, we complete our circuit with that which springs from the pencil, the chisel and the burin.”
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1876
“Indeed Bartoccini is already best known from the engravings of Overbeck's designs to the New Testament, the best of which were from his burin.”
International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘burin’.
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WWF WTF?
Ever play "Words With Friends" with someone and they throw down some strange, unlikely group of letters that makes even the most mild and squeaky clean tongued person say "whiskey tango foxtrot"? ...
oorie, sangar, merl, cwm, doum, weir, jura, invar, lawine, tapa, waw, shog and 376 more...
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Marbles
From the GNU Webster's 1913:
"n. A massive, compact limestone; a variety of calcite, capable of being polished and used for architectural and ornamental purposes. The color varies from white ...marble, marbles, lost my marbles, Elgin Marbles, Yule marble, Verona red marble, Carrara marble, Pentelican marble, Parian marble, bardiglio, lumachelle, fire-marble and 117 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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To a point
to the point
dot, betoken, cusp, nib, neb, nadir, bespeak, eutectic, punctilio, fulcrum, stretch a point, make a point and 69 more...
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Archaeology
Words for shovelbums!
trowel, mattock, chopper, n-transform, c-transform, taphonomy, processual, post-processual, microarchaeology, site, horizon, battleship curve and 33 more...
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Illuminated Manuscript
words for the bespoke
midheaven, moth-fly, yea-forsooth, ontil, coxcomb, vulnerary, landhelgisgæslan, beasthood, deviltry, triolet, diablerie, titil and 107 more...
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cutting words
sarcasm, sarx, sarcoptic, syssarcosis, shrew, shrewd, screed, scred, shroud, scroll, scrod, scrutiny and 326 more...
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...another list...
I've no idea where I got this page full of words, but whatever it is, I want to find it again. May have duplicate words from other lists.
bicameral, aphelion, dirigible, parhelion, flocculus, vernier, corticate, oxalis, pandanus, calabash, plumbago, jonquil and 217 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Greg's Words
frippet, furtive, gimcrack, indefatigable, vicissitudes, pedant, ziggurat, susurrus, sub rosa, rodomontade, interregnum, abscise and 168 more...
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e-less list
Choice words from Adair's translation of La Disparition
confocal, quiddity, burin, sororal, caparison, lancinating, simoon, fustian, turbot, hirudination, turbid, doss and 31 more...
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Printmaking Terms
inky sod, spreads like a disease
manicule, perfecting, lithography, relief, etching, serigraph, pantone, pms, edition, gum arabic, chine-collé, intaglio and 78 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for burin.
jaime_d "This incision in his olfactory tract producing a naso-dilation, Cochin profits from it by quickly scarifying Vowl's partition with a surgical pin, scraping it with a burin. . ." Gilbert Adair translation of Georges Perec's La Disparition Aug 11, 2010