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Iris   /ˈaɪrəs/  /ˈaɪrɪs/   Listen
noun
Iris  n.  (pl. E. irises, L. irides)  
1.
(Class. Myth.) The goddess of the rainbow, and swift-footed messenger of the gods.
2.
The rainbow.
3.
An appearance resembling the rainbow; a prismatic play of colors.
4.
(Anat.) The contractile membrane perforated by the pupil, and forming the colored portion of the eye. See Eye.
5.
(Bot.) A genus of plants having showy flowers and bulbous or tuberous roots, of which the flower-de-luce (fleur-de-lis), orris, and other species of flag are examples.
6.
(Her.) See Fleur-de-lis, 2.
7.
(Zool.) The inner circle of an oscillated color spot.
8.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Iris" Quotes from Famous Books



... wind, the son of Sarama the dawn, the lying, tricksome wind-god, who invented music, and conducts the souls of dead men to the house of Hades, even as his counterpart the Norse Odin rushes over the tree-tops leading the host of the departed. When one sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus, referred to a Hebrew original, because of Jehovah's promise to Noah, one is at a loss to understand the relationship between the two conceptions. Nothing could be more natural to ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... Mithradates, now resolved to maintain the strictest defensive, retired without giving battle from Sinope to Amisus, and from Amisus to Cabira (afterwards Neocaesarea, now Niksar) on the Lycus, a tributary of the Iris; he contented himself with drawing the enemy after him farther and farther into the interior, and obstructing their supplies and communications. Lucullus rapidly followed; Sinope was passed by; the Halys, the old boundary of the Roman dominion, was crossed and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness of the substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor; so that not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left for the pupil of the actor's eye, but in some instances, even the iris itself was painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... Liverpool ferry steamers, Iris and Gloucester, were selected after a long search by Captain Herbert Grant. They were selected because of their shallow draft, with a view in the first place to their pushing the Vindictive, which was to bear the brunt of the work, alongside Zeebrugge ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake

... leaves, are the limpets of the Thames. The small ammonite-like shells are called planorbis, and like most of the others, belong also to the upper tertiary fossils. They feed on the decaying leaves of the iris and other water plants, and from the number of divisions on the shell are believed to live for sometimes twenty years. Of the many varieties, one, the largest, the horn-coloured planorbis, emits a purple dye. Two centuries ago Lister made several experiments in the hope ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish


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