Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A red dyestuff once prepared from the dried bodies of various female scale insects of the genus Kermes.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Short for
kermes-mineral , or, more properly, mineral kermes. - noun A red dyestuff consisting of the dried bodies of the females of one or two species of Coccus, especially C. ilicis, an insect found on various species of oak in countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
- noun [capitalized] [NL,] A genus of Coccinæ erected by Targioni-Tozzetti.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) The dried bodies of the females of a scale insect (
Kermes ilices formerlyCoccus ilicis ), allied to the cochineal insect, and found on several species of oak near the Mediterranean; also, the dye obtained from them. They are round, about the size of a pea, contain coloring matter analogous to carmine, and are used in dyeing. They were anciently thought to be of a vegetable nature, and were used in medicine. - noun (Bot.) A small European evergreen oak (
Quercus coccifera ) on which the kermes insect (Kermes ilices , formerlyCoccus ilicis ) feeds. - noun (Zoöl.) A genus of scale insects including many species that feed on oaks. The adult female resembles a small gall.
- noun (Old Chem.), (Med. Chem.) A compound of the trioxide and trisulphide of antimony, used in medicine. This substance occurs in nature as the mineral
kermesite .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun any of several
insects of the genusKermes - noun uncountable Crimson
dye made from the crushed bodies of these insects
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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Carthamus tinctorius; and by the Hebrews from the Coccus ilicis, an insect which infests oak trees, called kermes by the
Easton's Bible Dictionary M.G. Easton 1897
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The Polifli berries, called kermes, are found adhering to the leaves, ftem, and branches, of a kind of ever-green of the oak genus; and are always gathered in May, before they are fully ripjC.
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She gave me thread dyed with madder, when I had been weaving thread dyed with kermes, a more expensive dye and a richer crimson.
Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009
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She gave me thread dyed with madder, when I had been weaving thread dyed with kermes, a more expensive dye and a richer crimson.
Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009
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She gave me thread dyed with madder, when I had been weaving thread dyed with kermes, a more expensive dye and a richer crimson.
Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009
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Had she sold the kermes thread and bought madder and kept the difference?
Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009
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Had she sold the kermes thread and bought madder and kept the difference?
Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009
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Had she sold the kermes thread and bought madder and kept the difference?
Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009
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L'ECARLATE rouge, communement apellée écarlate de Venise, sera teinte avec la graine de kermes, sans aucun meslange de bresil; sous les peines portées par l'articles XIX.
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Cochineal was, like kermes, an insect-based color source for red.
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There are samples of kermes, an Old World pigment created by grinding tiny blisters produced by the insects Coccus ilicis, which lived on the kermes oak tree.
Text of J.K. Rowling’s speech Colleen Walsh Harvard Staff Writer DateSeptember 17, 2015January 5, 2018 2018
chained_bear commented on the word kermes
"By the fourteenth century, Europeans had discovered yet another word to describe these dyestuffs: kermes, a term borrowed from kirmiz, the Arabic word for the insect reds. (The same word gave rise to the term crimson.) Like vermilion, kirmiz meant 'worm,' though it is unlikely that most Europeans were aware of this. First used to describe eastern imports of Armenian red and St John's blood, kermes became a common word for all three insect dyes by the sixteenth century."
Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 31.
See also oak-kermes.
October 5, 2017