Definitions

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

  • noun A moderate purplish red.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The color of rosaniline; an intensely chromatic and luminous purplish rose-color. see purple.

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

  • noun A brilliant deep pink color with a purplish tinge, one of the dyes derived from aniline; -- so called from Solferino in Italy, where a battle was fought about the time of its discovery.

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

  • noun A brilliant purple-red dye derived from aniline
  • noun The purple-red colour of this dye

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

  • noun an indecisive battle in 1859 between the French and Sardinians under Napoleon III and the Austrians under Francis Joseph I
  • noun a pink dye that was discovered in 1859, the year a battle was fought at Solferino

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Solferino, a village of northern Italy, from the discovery of a dye of this color in the same year that a battle was fought there (1859).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

So called from Solferino in Italy, where a battle was fought at about the time of its discovery.

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Examples

  • Main Street, when I saw Mary Sam's solferino bonnet bobbin 'up and down inside.

    Hepsey Burke

  • "Them cheeks is now a deep solferino colour," he observed, and

    Patty's Butterfly Days Carolyn Wells 1902

  • We'll paint the Langham a fine bright solferino, when the church parade is over. '

    A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus Arthur Conan Doyle 1894

  • The seats were long benches, upholstered with solferino-colored damask and the scenes were the merest daubs.

    Sixty Years of California Song Margaret Blake Alverson 1879

  • The pure arsenical tones are preferred in the Bend, and, by the bye, anybody who remembers the days when ladies wore magenta and solferino, and wants to have those dear old colors set his teeth on edge again, can go to the Bend and find them there.

    Jersey Street and Jersey Lane Urban and Suburban Sketches Kenneth [Illustrator] Frazier 1875

Comments

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  • This life seen in rose, as we know,
    Is achieved with the help of some vino.
    It's pink with two glasses,
    A few more surpasses
    And paints the whole world solferino.

    May 22, 2014

  • "Like mauve, the new color was worn by Empress Eugenie and became extremely popular; her solferino cashmere petticoat and matching 'Garibaldi' blouse were considered quite dashing. Perkin, too, created his own magenta dye, as well as a new color called vermillionette."

    Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 228.


    Another note on fuchsine.

    October 6, 2017