Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A brownish-red ferric oxide obtained as a residue after heating ferrous sulfate, used in glass polishing and as a pigment.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The brownish-red peroxid of iron which remains after the distillation of the acid from iron sulphate. It is used for polishing glass and other substances, and as a pigment under the name of Indian red. Also called chalcitis, crocus or crocus martis astringens, and caput mortuum vitrioli, or red vitriol.
Wiktionary
- n. organic chemistry, obsolete Polishing rouge; a reddish-brown oxide of iron, used in polishing glass, and also as a pigment; crocus Martis.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Chem.) Polishing rouge; a reddish brown oxide of iron, used in polishing glass, and also as a pigment; -- called also
crocus Martis .
Etymologies
- From Arabic qolqotar. (Wiktionary)
- Medieval Latin, from Spanish colcótar, from Arabic qulquṭār, possibly from Greek khalkanthos, copper sulfate : khalkos, copper + anthos, flower. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Il est plus beau, plus vif que le brun-rouge d'Angleterre: Selon les uns, c'est une terre calcinée; selon d'autres, dont je crois l'opinion fondée, c'est le colcothar ou caput mortuum des eaux fortes qu'on réduit en poudre fine, après avoir bien lavées.”
“The colors used for this style of painting are zinc white, green oxide of chrome, cobalt green, chromate of lead, colcothar, ochers, and ultramarine.”
“The precipitates of gold, and the colcothar or other red preparations of iron, are called _tender_ colours.”
The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation
“There were pins and needles, yarn and thread, that have taken the place of the wilder thorn and fibre; all kinds of small hardware; looking-glasses in lacquered frames; beads of sorts, cowries and reels of cotton; pots of odorous pomatum and shea-butter nuts; feathers of the plantain-bird and country snuff-boxes of a chestnut-like fruit (a strychnine?) from which the powder is inhaled, _more majorum_, through a quill; physic-nuts (_tiglium_, or croton), a favourite but painful native remedy; horns of the goat and antelope, possibly intended for fetish 'medicine;' blue-stone, colcothar and other drugs.”
To the Gold Coast for Gold A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Volume I
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘colcothar’.
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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Chromonyms
These chromonyms are defined as colors in at least one dictionary (mostly MW3). (Actually there's one fake, for reasons I'll explain someday.) They are all one-word nouns such as "kelly", which can...
absinthe, acacia, acorn, alabaster, alesan, almond, aloma, amaranth, amber, amethyst, anemone, anil and 821 more...
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Malfeas notes
Descriptive words for an upcoming project.
stippled, tumid, turgid, putrescent, primeval, moiety, musk, prolix, excrescence, septentrion, wherry, jumentous and 44 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for colcothar.
chained_bear "'There are two mortars with their pestles just below the colcothar of vitriol.'"
--Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days, 43
A Sea of Words: Colcothar of vitriol: A powdery reddish or purple substance used as an emetic. (p. 151) Mar 20, 2008