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Ambergris   Listen
noun
Ambergris  n.  A substance of the consistence of wax, found floating in the Indian Ocean and other parts of the tropics, and also as a morbid secretion in the intestines of the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), which is believed to be in all cases its true origin. In color it is white, ash-gray, yellow, or black, and often variegated like marble. The floating masses are sometimes from sixty to two hundred and twenty-five pounds in weight. It is wholly volatilized as a white vapor at 212° Fahrenheit, and is highly valued in perfumery.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ambergris" Quotes from Famous Books



... gradually diminished till they terminated in a point, radiant as the sun when he darts his last beams athwart the ocean; the pavement, strewed over with gold dust and saffron, exhaled so subtle an odor as almost overpowered them; they however went on, and observed an infinity of censers, in which ambergris and the wood of aloes were continually burning; between the several columns were placed tables, each spread with a profusion of viands, and wines of every species sparkling in vases of crystal. A throng of genii and other fantastic spirits ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... appearance of a madman and wandered about till he came to a lawn where several peri-faced girls were amusing themselves. On a throne, jewelled and overspread with silken stuffs, sat a girl the splendour of whose beauty lighted up the place, and whose ambergris and attar perfumed the whole air. 'That must be Mihr-afruz,' he thought, 'she is indeed lovely.' Just then one of the attendants came to the water's edge to fill a cup, and though the prince was in hiding, his face was reflected in the water. ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... came out to behold the child, and she joined her lamentations unto theirs. Then they built for Sohrab a tomb like to a horse's hoof, and Rustem laid him therein in a chamber of gold perfumed with ambergris. And he covered him with brocades of gold. And when it was done, the house of Rustem grew like to a grave, and its courts were filled with the voice of sorrow. And no joy would enter into the heart of Rustem, and it was long before ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... gold; powder of white amber; powder of pearl; Spanish pastilles (ambergris, sugar, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... to explain that Hebe was (for once) the legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw wine for the gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who the gods were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; don't explain that 'gris' in this connexion doesn't mean 'grease'; don't trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark; don't prove its electrical properties by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Ross (1823) and Edward B. Eastwick (1852). Sadi's aim was to make "a garden of roses whose leaves the rude hand of the blast of Autumn could not affect." [410] "The very brambles and rubbish of this book," says an ancient enthusiastic admirer, "are of the nature of ambergris." Men treasured the scraps of Sadi's writing "as if they were gold leaf," and The Gulistan has attained a popularity in the East "which has never been reached in this Western world." The school-boy lisps his first lessons in it, the pundit quotes it, and hosts of its sayings have become ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... the word cacao, in Mexican cacauatl.[7] In the New World it was compounded of cacao, maize, and flavourings to which the Spaniards, on discovering it, added sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and other ingredients, such as musk and ambergris, cloves and nutmegs, almonds and pistachios, anise, and even red peppers or chillies. "Sometimes," says a treatise on "The Natural History of Chocolate," "China [quinine] and assa [foetida?]; and sometimes steel and rhubarb, may be added ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head

... this core Of ice, my heart, undo these crystal spells, We should be sisters of incense evermore Like the crowned Lover of the Canticles. Through the great honeycomb of my soul should steep The secrets of the lilies, and her fire Be ambergris, her agate flagons keep The sorcelled hydromel which brings Desire To that mysterious Dark where still prevails The dream of roses and ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... own shapely limbs. Hundreds and hundreds of lamps shone upon the pillars which supported the room—lamps of manifold colours—which gave to the vast chamber the magic hues of a fairy palace, and in the midst thereof seemed to float a transparent blue cloud—it was the light smoke of ambergris and spices which the damsels blew forth from their long narghilis. But what impressed Irene far more than all this magnificence, was the figure of the Sultana Asseki, to whom she was now conducted. A tall, muscular ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... persons, glittered with sumptuous appointments of silver, Venetian glass, and the rarest flowers; the floor was carpeted with velvet pile, in which some grains of ambergris had been scattered, so that in walking the feet sunk, as it were, into a bed of moss rich with the odors of a thousand spring blossoms. The very chairs wherein my guests were to seat themselves were of a luxurious shape and softly stuffed, so that one could lean back ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... in a clean bottle, a pint of inodorous spirit of wine, an ounce of oil of lavender, a teaspoonful of oil of bergamot, and a tablespoonful of oil of ambergris. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... 13th.—At 6 a.m. we made the island of Sokotra, and about seven o'clock saw 'The Brothers,' two islands where large quantities of turtle and ambergris are found. Though generally uninhabited, they are sometimes visited by the natives for the purpose of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... pint of alcohol slowly on to an ounce and a half of the oil of lavender, two drachms of ambergris. Keep the lavender water in a tight-corked bottle—it should be shook up well ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... before seen a piece of ambergris, but had, of course, often heard of it, and knew it to be valuable; I accordingly ordered the mainyard to be laid aback, and sent the boatswain away with a crew in the gig to pick up the piece of "flotsam." In about a quarter of an hour they returned to the ship with their ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... islands, could I have spent time here, and either got to the main of New Holland or find out some other islands that might afford us water and other refreshments; besides that among so many islands we might have found some sort of rich mineral, or ambergris, it being a good latitude for both these. But we had not sailed above a league farther before our water grew shoaler again, and then we anchored ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... Walters thinks he can find ambergris which has been washed up on the rocks, and that is quoted at ten dollars per ounce. Now you boys have been at school long enough to know exactly why it is ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis



Words linked to "Ambergris" :   animal product



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