Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or resembling an amaranth.
  • adjective Eternally beautiful and unfading; everlasting.
  • adjective Deep purple-red.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to the amaranth; consisting of, containing, or resembling amaranth.
  • Never-fading, like the amaranth of the poets; imperishable.
  • Of a purplish color. Also written amarantine.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to amaranth.
  • adjective Unfading, as the poetic amaranth; undying.
  • adjective Of a purplish color.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A dark reddish purple colour.
  • adjective Of a dark reddish purple colour
  • adjective unfading, eternal, immortal, infinite
  • adjective relating to the imaginary amaranth flower that never fades
  • adjective relating to, or having the form of plants of the genus Amaranthus

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or related to the amaranth plant
  • adjective of an imaginary flower that never fades

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From amaranth, referring to the color of the flowers

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Examples

  • The word amaranthine indicates both eternal, unfading beauty and (as related to the flower) a deep purple-red, and at least on me, Amaranthine is close to eternal - I get a good 24 to 36 hours of fun, and I wouldn't want to overspray.

    Perfume Posse 2010

  • John deBrun did not recollect his past, and his amaranthine youth reflected that time itself neglected him from its memory even as it left its noticeable mark on everyone else.

    Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell – review 2009

  • Think of it as the Long Tail of Friendship—in the age of queue-able social priorities, Twitter-able status updates, and amaranthine cloud memory, keeping friends requires almost no effort at all.

    Scott Brown on Facebook Friendonomics 2008

  • Think of it as the Long Tail of Friendship—in the age of queue-able social priorities, Twitter-able status updates, and amaranthine cloud memory, keeping friends requires almost no effort at all.

    Scott Brown on Facebook Friendonomics 2008

  • The combo of EMI and Warner Music would boast a horde of chart-topping musicians like Coldplay, amaranthine songstress Madonna and rapper Eminem.

    Bronfman's Warner Music And EMI To Do Duet? 2006

  • As we trooped out of St. Peter's basilica that day, spreading our amaranthine stain over the great parvis, a palpable euphoria thrilled through the entire body.

    11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003 John 2003

  • Eleanor wanted to assure her Elm Creek Manor was not some mean farmhouse, but even more, she wanted to shake her mother and ask her how she could be so blind to the amaranthine sky, the rolling green hills, the lush forests that in autumn would be ablaze with color, breathtaking in their beauty.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • Eleanor wanted to assure her Elm Creek Manor was not some mean farmhouse, but even more, she wanted to shake her mother and ask her how she could be so blind to the amaranthine sky, the rolling green hills, the lush forests that in autumn would be ablaze with color, breathtaking in their beauty.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • Eleanor wanted to assure her Elm Creek Manor was not some mean farmhouse, but even more, she wanted to shake her mother and ask her how she could be so blind to the amaranthine sky, the rolling green hills, the lush forests that in autumn would be ablaze with color, breathtaking in their beauty.

    The Quilter's Legacy Jennifer Chiaverini 2003

  • I had heard of the famous tapestries of Guermantes, I could see them, mediaeval and blue, a trifle coarse, detach themselves like a floating cloud from the legendary, amaranthine name at the foot of the ancient forest in which

    The Guermantes Way 2003

Comments

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  • In The Last Unicorn, Peter Beagle described the unicorn as having amarathine eyes. This uses both meanings of amarathine simultaneously (undying and a purple color) without it being a pun or zeugma. Is there a word for this literary device?

    November 4, 2007

  • The closest I can think of would be to say bon mot, but it doesn't describe this specific situation.

    November 4, 2007

  • Mollusque:

    "It is indeed a kind of pun called the ANTANACLASIS (an-ta-NA-cla-sis), or double entendre. Not the joking, play-on-words kind of pun, the antanaclasis strikes a rhetorical chord, causing the word to vibrate with its double meaning -- a bicorn, if you will."

    --From: Ask Figaro (figarospeech.com)

    November 23, 2007

  • Thanks oroboros! I hadn't heard of antanaclasis and it's close to what I seek. The only difference seems to be that in antanaclasis the word with a double meaning is repeated. I'd been toying with polysemy also, but that seems to refer to different meanings in different contexts. Maybe what I want is "merged antanaclasis" or "simultaneous polysemy".

    November 23, 2007

  • "But in order that I should not be disappointed by the words that I should hear uttered by a person who called herself Mme de Guermantes, even if I had not been in love with her, it would not have sufficed that those words be shrewd, beautiful, and profound, they would have had to reflect that amaranthine colour of the closing syllable of her name, that colour which on first seeing her I had been disappointed not to find in her person and had fancied as having taken refuge in her mind."

    --The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 280 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    August 10, 2008

  • What time the poet hath hymned

    The writhing maid, lithe-limbed,

    Quivering on amaranthine asphodel,

    How can he paint her woes,

    Knowing, as well he knows,

    That all can be set right with calomel?

    -- Bunthorne, the Aesthetic Poet, in W.S. Gilbert's Patience

    August 21, 2008