Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The remains of burned wood or plants.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The Russian half-breed wife of Bettles sought the fireplace, inconsolable, and rocked back and forth, and ever and anon flung white wood-ashes upon her raven hair.

    AT THE RAINBOW'S END 2010

  • His mother strewed wood-ashes on her head and blackened her face.

    Chapter 21 2010

  • He was only a young man, and a dandy at that, his face blackened with charcoal, his hair whitened with wood-ashes, with the freshly severed tail of a wild pig thrust through his perforated nose, and two more thrust through his ears.

    Chapter 25 2010

  • And, to come to domestic customs, at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire the person who bought the wood-ashes of a family used to send a present of a large candle at Candlemas.

    Leap Year -- Day John 2008

  • A large quantity of wood-ashes is collected (the woods preferred for the purpose are the mimosa nitta, and mimosa pulverulenta,) and put into an unglazed earthen vessel which has a hole in its bottom; over which is put some straw.

    The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, in the Year 1805 2008

  • The market is crowded with people from morning to night: some of the stalls contain nothing but beads; others indigo in balls; others wood-ashes in balls; others Houssa and Jinnie cloth.

    The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, in the Year 1805 2008

  • Left to himself, Vendale raked the logs together, sprinkled over them the white wood-ashes lying on the hearth, and sat down to compose his thoughts.

    No Thoroughfare 2007

  • The root of this plant (‘Convolvulus batata’) does not keep more than two or three days, unless it is cut into thin slices and dried in the sun, but the Maravi manage to preserve them for months by digging a pit and burying them therein inclosed in wood-ashes.

    Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa 2004

  • We made our own butter, a jar serving as a churn; and our own candles by means of moulds; and soap was procured from the ashes of the plant salsola, or from wood-ashes, which in Africa contain so little alkaline matter that the boiling of successive leys has to be continued for a month or six weeks before the fat is saponified.

    Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa 2004

  • I did so with some regret, for we had good fare enough in it, and I rather liked it; we had only stones for seats, but we made splendid fires, and got fresh and clean snow-grass to lie on, and dried the floor with wood-ashes.

    A First Year in Canterbury Settlement 2004

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