tincture

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A coloring or dyeing substance; a pigment.
2. n. An imparted color; a tint.
3. n. A quality that colors, pervades, or distinguishes.
4. n. A trace or vestige: "a faint tincture of condescension” ( Robert Craft).
5. n. An alcohol solution of a nonvolatile medicine: tincture of iodine.
6. n. Heraldry A metal, color, or fur.
7. v. To stain or tint with a color.
8. v. To infuse, as with a quality; impregnate.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The color with which anything is imbued or impregnated; natural or distinctive coloring; tint; hue; shade of color.
2. n. In heraldry, one of the metals, colors, or furs used in heraldic achievements. The metals are or (gold) and argent (silver); the colors, gules (red), azure (blue), sable (black), vert (green), purpure (purple), sanguine or murrey (blood-red), and tenné or tenney (tawny, orange); and the furs, ermine, ermines, erminois, pean, vair, counter-vair, potent, and counter-potent. (See these words, and also fur, 7.) Of the colors, the first three are the most common, and the last two are very exceptional. Sable is considered by some writers as partaking of the nature both of metal and of color. In modern usage (from the sixteenth century), in representations in black and white, as by engraving, argent is indicated by a plain surface, and the other tinctures by conventional arrangements of lines, etc., as in the cut. A law of heraldry seldom violated provides that the tincture of a bearing must be a metal if the field is a color, and vice versa. See false heraldry, under false.
3. n. Something exhibiting or imparting a tint or shade of color; colored or coloring matter; pigment.
4. n. Infused or derived quality or tone; distinctive character as due to some intermixture or influence; imparted tendency or inclination: used of both material and immaterial things; in alchemy, etc., a supposed spiritual principle or immaterial substance whose character or quality may be infused into material things, then said to be tinctured : as, tincture of the “Red Lion.”
5. n. A shade or modicum of a quality or of the distinctive quality of something; a coloring or flavoring; a tinge; a taste; a spice; a smack: as, a tincture of garlic in a dish.
6. n. A fluid containing the essential principles or elements of some substance diffused through it by solution; specifically, in medicine, a solution of a vegetable, an animal, or sometimes a mineral substance, in a menstruum of alcohol, sulphuric ether, or spirit of ammonia, prepared by maceration, digestion, or (now most commonly) percolation. Tinctures are also often prepared, especially on the continent of Europe, by the addition of alcohol to the expressed juices of plants. According to the menstruum, tinctures are distinguished as alcoholic, ethereal, and ammoniated tinctures; and when wine is used they are called medicated wines. Compound tinctures are those in which two or more ingredients are submitted to the action of the solvent. Simple tinctures are such as contain the essential principles of but one substance in solution.
7. n. Bitter tincture.
8. To imbue with color; impart a shade of color to; tinge; tint; stain.
9. To give a peculiar taste, flavor, or character to; imbue; impregnate; season.
10. To taint; corrupt.

Wiktionary

1. n. A pigment or other substance that colours or dyes.
2. n. A tint, or an added colour.
3. n. heraldry A colour or metal used in the depiction of a coat of arms.
4. n. An alcoholic extract of plant material, used as a medicine.
5. n. humorous A small alcoholic drink.
6. n. An essential characteristic.
7. v. to stain or impregnate (something) with colour

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A tinge or shade of color; a tint.
2. n. (Her.) One of the metals, colors, or furs used in armory.
3. n. The finer and more volatile parts of a substance, separated by a solvent; an extract of a part of the substance of a body communicated to the solvent.
4. n. (Med.) A solution (commonly colored) of medicinal substance in alcohol, usually more or less diluted; spirit containing medicinal substances in solution.
5. n. A slight taste superadded to any substance.
6. n. A slight quality added to anything; a tinge.
7. v. To communicate a slight foreign color to; to tinge; to impregnate with some extraneous matter.
8. v. To imbue the mind of; to communicate a portion of anything foreign to; to tinge.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. stain or tint with a color
2. n. an indication that something has been present
3. n. a quality of a given color that differs slightly from another color
4. n. a substances that colors metals
5. v. fill, as with a certain quality
6. n. (pharmacology) a medicine consisting of an extract in an alcohol solution