Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A dry red wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France.
- n. A similar wine made elsewhere.
- n. A dark or grayish purplish red to dark purplish pink.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Clear; clearish: applied to wine.
- Having the color of claret wine.
- n. The name given in English to the red wines of France, particularly to those of Bordeaux, but excluding Burgundy wines. In France the name clairet is given only to thin or poor wines of a light-red color.
- n. Any similar red wine, wherever made: as, California claret.
- n. Blood.
Wiktionary
- n. chiefly UK A dry red wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France, or a similar wine made elsewhere.
- n. A deep purplish-red colour, like that of the wine.
- adj. Of a deep purplish-red colour, like that of claret.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The name first given in England to the red wines of Médoc, in France, and afterwards extended to all the red Bordeaux wines. The name is also given to similar wines made in the United States.
WordNet 3.0
- n. dry red Bordeaux or Bordeaux-like wine
- n. a dark purplish-red color
- v. drink claret
Etymologies
- From Middle English, from Middle French claret. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, light-colored wine, from Old French (vin) claret, diminutive of clair, clear, from Latin clārus; see clear. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“A "grandfather" provision allows wineries already using the term claret to continue to do so, but it must now conform to "the trade understanding of such class and type.”
“He will be fetching old claret from the cellar in no time!”
“They will drink their wretched heartless stuff, such as they call claret, or wine of Medoc, or Bordeaux, or what not, with no more meaning than sour rennet, stirred with the pulp from the cider press, and strained through the cap of our Betty.”
“-- The word claret seems to me to be the same as the French word _clairet_, both adjective and substantive; as a substantive it means a low and cheap sort of _claret_, sold in France, and drawn from the barrel like beer in England; as an adjective it is a diminutive of _clair_, and implies that the wine is transparent.”
“The drink was the same fiery distillation that was known as claret, sherry, brandy, rum, whisky, or whatever else a role might call for.”
“Experiment has convinced me that the slight amount of alcohol I imbibe in my claret is a grateful stimulus to digestion.”
Study and Stimulants; Or, the Use of Intoxicants and Narcotics in Relation to Intellectual Life
“It was really an admirable little dinner; the claret was a famous one from the Anglemere cellars, and warmed to a nicety; the coffee was perfection; Sparling's ministrations left nothing to be desired; and yet Drake sank into his easy-chair after the meal with a sigh that was weary and wistful.”
“All those wines called in England clarets are the produce of the country round Bordeaux, or the Bordelais; but it is remarkable that there is no pure wine in France known by the name of claret, which is a corruption of clairet, a term that is applied there to any red or rose-coloured wine.”
“The title, we say, is a good title; and the book has an unmistakable claret flavour -- the best English claret, that is to say -- which unites the strength of Burgundy with the bouquet of”
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852
“Up, and before I went out Mr. Peter Barr sent me a tierce of claret, which is very welcome.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘claret’.
-
Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
-
Reds
crimson, blood, scarlet, rott, rojo, brick, fire engine, vermilion, carmine, burgundy, amaranth, alizarin and 115 more...
-
Russian Doll Words
A Russian Doll word is a word that, when you remove the first and last letters, is either the empty string, or a Russian Doll word. These are all of the 6 or more letter Russian Doll words found in...
waspiness, upraisers, strainers, sporangia, raspiness, prelatess, methanals, gaspiness, washings, uprisers, upraises, upraiser and 2373 more...
-
wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 351 more...
-
Tristram Shandy
souse, meet, sententious, propound, boot, casuistry, avoirdupois, akimbo, disport, lenity, succussation, sweetbread and 155 more...
-
Archaic Colours
Words for colours that have fallen out of use.
aeneous, croceate, cretaceous, cramoisy, corbeau, coquelicot, coccineous, claret, cinerious, chrysochlorous, chlorochrous, cesious and 128 more...
-
Gristle and Flesh
Words that taste of violence, trauma, blood and brain, gore-some and slippery with vitreous humours. Lovely words, some of them! And the loveliest thing is how many of them are so *effective*, ma...
abattoir, gristle, viscous, eviscerate, ravage, carnage, gouge, claret, slaughterous, sanguinary, laniate, defenestrate and 11 more...
-
Colors
Different words for colors; ex: florid, cerise, claret, etc.
cerise, florid, claret, chartreuse, watchet, argent, tawny, xanthous, rosaceous, ocher, pewter, coquelicot and 3 more...
-
Words descriptive of the colour of th...
sloe, hyaline, dull, turquoise, slate, snotgreen, ultramarine, glaucous, murky, ashen, wine-dark, claret and 32 more...
-
Colors
cerise, carnelian, florid, claret, watchet, rosaceous, coquelicot, vermilion, celadon, nacreous, lapis, viridescent and 132 more...
-
Uncommon and Interesting words
That come in handy, but might make you look like a douchebag.
prurient, lithe, superannuated, wanderlust, sanguine, florid, slugabed, candor, eldritch, superbowl syndrome, indolent, perforce and 37 more...
-
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...
-
Notre Dame de Paris
From Notre Dame de Paris by good ole Victor Hugo. (Also called The Hunchback of Notre Dame.)
cuivres, diable, hawthorn, provost, epithalamium, affrighted, mendicants, vagrants, Styx, chimeras, coif, matagrabolise and 196 more...
-
ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
-
Pigments
-
tomax's Words
legerdemain, yayo, extravasation, wont, faze, coxswain, concomitant, enclave, unguent, rhabdomyolysis, effluent, puerile and 432 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for claret.
reesetee Whoever said I wasn't, bilby? Feb 1, 2009
dontcry They weren't so think as you drunk they were....
Go Steelers.
Feb 1, 2009
bilby Gosh. Why weren't you a private detective, reesetee? Feb 1, 2009
reesetee Here's one! Jan 31, 2009
bilby Punchducks. Jan 31, 2009
chained_bear I wanna know what kind of ducks. Jan 31, 2009
reesetee No wonder their handwriting was so awful. ;-> Jan 31, 2009
chained_bear "Did you know that the bill for a celebration party for the 55 drafters of the US Constitution was for 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of port, 8 bottles of hard cider, 12 beers and seven bowls of alcohol punch large enough that 'ducks could swim in them'?"
—Sommelier India, Posted at July 2, 2008, seen here.
Sounds like a party! Jan 30, 2009