Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A brownish-red ferric oxide obtained as a residue after heating ferrous sulfate, used in glass polishing and as a pigment.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The brownish-red peroxid of iron which remains after the distillation of the acid from iron sulphate.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Chem.) Polishing rouge; a reddish brown oxide of iron, used in polishing glass, and also as a pigment; -- called also
crocus Martis .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun organic chemistry, obsolete
Polishing rouge ; areddish -brown oxide ofiron , used in polishingglass , and also as apigment ; crocus Martis.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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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.
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The colors used for this style of painting are zinc white, green oxide of chrome, cobalt green, chromate of lead, colcothar, ochers, and ultramarine.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 Various
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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 Erasmus Darwin 1766
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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 Richard Francis Burton 1855
chained_bear commented on the word colcothar
"'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)
March 20, 2008