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Purplish   /pˈərplɪʃ/   Listen
Purplish

adjective
1.
Of a color intermediate between red and blue.  Synonyms: purple, violet.



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"Purplish" Quotes from Famous Books



... the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and the crimson beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping over the brown feathers! He could see the red shining of the drops, it was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step. So easy, as it seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be—not in all the thousands of years to come—that he should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... raising the question as to whether there was such a thing as a "purple cow." And even today in many of the rural districts there are old farmers who never heard of Burgess and his "purple cow" who will tell you solemnly that "there is a cow of a sort of purplish color." Which goes to prove that after all nonsense ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck

... groves. Bread-fruits were here and there, but never well-to-do; Hawaii is no true mother for the bread-fruit or the cocoa-palm. Mangoes, on the other hand, attained a splendid bigness, many of them discoloured on one side with a purplish hue which struck the note of autumn. The same note was repeated by a certain aerial creeper, which drops (you might suppose) from heaven like the wreck of an old kite, and roosts on tree-tops with a pendent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... like the zig-zags of the Norman builders, while sometimes they are deflected into crescents, or other curves, as particularly one resembling a willow-leaf. The colours are not very vivid, but are pleasing and well-contrasted; they are chiefly five—white, blue, yellow, green, and a purplish brown. Red scarcely appears, except in a very pale, pinkish form; and even in this form it is uncommon. Blue, on the other hand, is greatly affected, being sometimes used in the patterns, often taken ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... the western horizon, cast over snow-covered plains a purplish light. No living creature was in sight and the quest seemed hopeless, but Anookasan was not one ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... little bags, and presents for everyone, remnants, oddments, underwear, some green silk for a frock for Gerda, a shady hat for herself, a wonderful cushion for Grandmama with a picture of the sea on it, a silk knitted jumper for Neville, of the same purplish blue as her eyes. She was happy, going about like a bee from flower to flower, gathering this honey for them all. She had come up alone; she hadn't let Neville come with her. She had said she was going to be an independent old ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... his handkerchief, and, overwhelmed with grief, seemed unable to speak; but, on casting his eye behind the screen, he soon broke silence; for, struck with the shape of the coffin, he lifted up a purplish-coloured cloth that was spread over it, and, starting back, Good ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... fortunately killed was about four feet long, including the tail; which was, however, very nearly half that length. Its fur was of a purplish hue, warming into a rich rusty red towards the tail. It had strong, powerful claws on its hinder feet, almost concealed by the thick hair around them. We did not, however, stop long to examine it, but, taking out our knives, quickly ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... distillations of the autumnal growths were diffused on the air. The deer are but ill at road-making,—such tangled coverts, such clifty ledges, such wild leaps; for now the path threaded the jagged verge of precipices. The valley, a black abyss above which massive, purplish mountains loomed against a sky of pearly tints, was visibly narrowing. They all knew that presently it would become a mere gorge, a vast indentation in the mountain-side. The weird vistas across the gorge were visible how, craggy steeps, and deep woods filled with moonlight, with ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... a young man of tender years, wearing on his head, to hold his hair together, a cap of gold of purplish tinge, inlaid with precious gems. Parallel with his eyebrows was attached a circlet, embroidered with gold, and representing two dragons snatching a pearl. He wore an archery-sleeved deep red jacket, with hundreds ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... back into the cliff wall. The climb before him he knew in part, for this was the path the wolverines had followed on their two other escapes. A few moments of tricky scrambling and he was out in a cuplike depression choked with brush covered with the purplish foliage of Warlock. On the other side of that was a small cut to a sloping hillside, giving on another valley, not as wide as that in which the camp stood, but one well provided with cover in the way of trees ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... exceedingly pleasant juiciness, and excellent flavor from January to June. In western New York, they have been carried to the harvest field, in July in excellent condition. A fair bearer of beautiful fruit. Subacid with a peculiar freshness of flavor. Dark stripes of purplish red in the sun, but a greenish pale yellow in the shade. High culture and an open top for admission of the sun, affects the fruit ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... for him on the boat. Presently he pulled out a red-bordered handkerchief, and unobtrusively wiped his forehead, under his checked travelling cap. When he had done this, I saw that his hair was left streaked with damp; and there was a faint, purplish stain on the handkerchief, observing which with evident dismay he stuffed the big square of coarse ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... rendered more intensely pure by contrast with luxuriant silky hair of the deepest black,—and large superbly shaped eyes of clear, dark steel blue, almost violet in hue,—with delicately arched brows and very long lashes of that purplish black tint which only the trite and oft-borrowed plumes of ravens adequately illustrate. The forehead was not remarkable for height, but was peculiarly broad and full with unusual width between the eyes, and if ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... bearing, were oddly exotic and even more oddly fascinating. His slenderness was as strong as a tempered sword-blade, his quietness was trained power in repose. And the hair of his head was so black that a purplish shadow rested upon it, and so thick that one ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... proved to be a tall, slender, pale woman with dark hair and a magnetic eye, an eye that probably accounted more than anything else for her success. She was clad in a house gown of purplish silk which clung tightly to her, and at her throat a diamond pendant sparkled, as well as other brilliants on her ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... came. The women wore for the most part calico dresses, bright in colour and generous in volume, heavily starched and absolutely devoid of fit. Their brown faces were heavily powdered, producing in some of the darker ones a purplish tint, which was ghastly in the light of the oil lamps. Some of the younger girls were comely despite their crude toilets, with soft skins, ripe breasts, mild dark heifer-like eyes, and pretty teeth showing in delighted grins. The ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... become a glorious picture of vivid coloring. The clumps of pine woods no longer present their tattered purplish appearance, the garb in which grim Winter is wont to robe them. They are lighter, gayer, and bathed in the gleaming sunlight they are transformed from their somber forbidding aspect to that of radiant, welcome shade. The river is high, almost to flooding point. And the melting snow on ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... Mary felt as if she were in the forest with them. Out of a deep window she could see a great climbing stretch of land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to look rather like an endless, dull, purplish sea. ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... its stead the Prince had wrapped himself in a worn robe of old brocade, fur-lined. Heavy felt slippers shod his feet. His hair was tumbled over his head in a leonine mass. His features were gray; but his eyes still glowed above the dark, purplish circles that shadowed his cheeks. His documents were finished. He had sat for two hours and more in this present brown study; and, tested as his endurance had been, his concentration was still absolute. On the table, near at hand, stood a flask of vodka, nearly empty, and a jar of water ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... be in a strange world, a soundless, ruinous world, a world of heaped broken things. And it was lit—and somehow this was more familiar to her mind than any other fact about her—by a flickering, purplish-crimson light. Then close to her, rising above a confusion of debris, she recognised the Trocadero; it was changed, something had gone from it, but its outline was unmistakable. It stood out against a streaming, whirling uprush of red-lit steam. And with ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... found her. Her back was towards him as she faced the western horizon, where clouds of rose and gold were sailing in a sky of warm apple-green which toned above them to a luminous silvery blue. On the edge of the slope in the foreground some cypresses were silhouetted in purplish bronze. She turned as she heard his footsteps, her face so wondrously fair in the half light that his heart ached afresh at the sight of her. "I'd quite given up expecting you, Girofle," she said, with a nonchalance ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... from the cart. His face, neck, and hands were stringy and purplish—a cross between an eggplant ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... while she spoke, Miss Felicia's anxiety deepened, for the kindly, easy-going clergyman appeared to suffer, like the servants, from some uncommon shock. His large fleshy nose and somewhat pendulous cheeks were a mottled, purplish red. Anger and deprecation struggled in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... dark purplish brown on dorsal surfaces of head, body, and shanks; thighs brown above and yellowish tan posteriorly; white stripe extending from below eye above forearm to mid-flank. Ventral surfaces creamy white; ventrolateral glands orange-tan flecked with dark brown; edge of lower lip with dark brown ...
— Descriptions of Two Species of Frogs, Genus Ptychohyla - Studies of American Hylid Frogs, V • William E. Duellman

... Prairie rose Deep pink Climbing; prairies West. Prickly poppy Showy yellow Open woods; South and West. Rattle-box Yellow Sandy soil; New Jersey. Royal catchfly Deep scarlet Western prairies. Sea-rocket Purplish New England coast and West. Slender sundew White Shores of Western lakes. Snow-berry White Rocky banks; Vermont to Pa. Spikenard White Rich woodlands; New England. St. Andrew's cross Yellow, stamens crossing New Jersey; Illinois. St. John's wort Yellow, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... grows on the side of the road between Norwalk and Danbury, where the very large black walnut tree is, 15 feet in circumference, said to be the largest in Connecticut. This purple variety has nuts with a brownish red involucre showing sharply against the green leaves. The young foliage is purplish red, and the cambium and the pellicle of the kernels are purple. It is a very fair nut and the tree is very striking when it starts in spring with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... thirty-two years, strong and vigorous, with no lack of nerve-energy, calls to have his teeth attended to, with the disease in the first stage throughout the mouth. Upon examination, he observes upon the gum of one of the lower cuspids a dark purplish ring encircling the neck, from one-sixty-fourth to one sixteenth of an inch in depth; the tooth in situ is white and clean. With the aid of the mouth and hand mirror he shows the condition to the patient, and, taking up an excavator, endeavors ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently come there by a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had never looked so seductive as at this moment, in the noontide bright but heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... defer her answer till he was quiet again, till Mary Garth had supplied him with fresh syrup, and he had begun to rub the gold knob of his stick, looking bitterly at the fire. It was a bright fire, but it made no difference to the chill-looking purplish tint of Mrs. Waule's face, which was as neutral as her voice; having mere chinks for eyes, and lips that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... portion of the common tin-cup's rim. The happy idea of going out on the platform struck him, and he acted upon it. The morning air was deliciously cool and fresh by contrast, and he filled his lungs with it again and again. Standing here, he could discern beyond the buildings to the right the faint purplish outlines of great rounded hills. Some workmen, one of them bearing a torch, were crouching along under the side of the train, pounding upon the resonant wheels with small hammers. He recalled having heard the same sound in the watches of the night, during a prolonged ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... small purplish speck on the far horizon, but it broke the monotony of the sky-line sharply. Coyote Pete scrutinized it with keen eyes for a moment, narrowing his optics till they ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... high colour in her cheeks, and dun, close hair like a cap. It was evident she was not a lady: her grammar was not without reproach. She had pale grey eyes, and a padding step, and a soft voice, and almost purplish cheeks. Mrs. Houghton, Miss Frost, and Alvina did not like her. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... mass of water, scarcely moved by a ripple, now appeared lit up with countless fires, and a purplish haze, like a low flame, was visible in every direction. I directed the attention of my companion to this strange appearance. Notwithstanding the intensity of her anxiety, she immediately entered into an explanation of the phenomenon, and attributed it to a peculiarly ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... moment something happened that drew away Antonio's attention from all these objects. A door that seemed shut was only ajar; it opened, and he saw into a room filled with a red purplish light; and at the door in the midst of this roseate glow was standing a pale ghost that ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... Preceptress of the National College, and to her was addressed the questions I asked about things that impressed me. She was one of the most beautiful beings that it had been my lot to behold. Her eyes were dark, almost the purplish blue of a pansy, and her hair had a darker tinge than is common in Mizora, as if it had stolen the golden edge of a ripe chestnut. Her beauty was a ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... been to myself—Larchant with its noble tower rising from the plain, recalling the still nobler ruin of Tclemcen on the borders of the Sahara—Recloses with its pictorial interiors and grand promontory overlooking a panorama of forest, sombre purplish green ocean unflecked by a single sail—Moret with its twin water-ways, one hardly knows which of the two being the more attractive—Nemours, favourite haunt of Balzac, memoralized in "Ursule Mirouet"—La Charite, from whose old-world dwellings ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a thin gangplank and enter the sub. The lights in it are indirect and are purplish green. Hitler Number Three shows us the telepathic machine, the radar, and the viso-screen that pictures everything going on upstairs on Earth, and on Mars, Jupiter and all other planets. There are four other beetleheads on the sub and they ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... Doctor Wiederman himself, had scarred his old arms with purplish marks, and were absorbed more and more slowly as the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and already a murmur of applause went through the audience. M. Roussillon stroked the bulging crystal of the time-piece with a circular motion of his thumb and bowed again, clearing his throat resonantly, his face growing purplish above ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... wheeling kites, and know that they are brown, not black. Imagine all the houses, and the shacks between them, and the poles on which the burlap awnings hang, painted on flat canvas and stood up against that infinite blue. Stick some vultures in a row along a roof-top— purplish—bronze they'll look between the tiles and sky. Add yellow camels, gray horses, striped robes, long rifles, and a searching sun-dried smell. And there you have El-Kerak, ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... sat Schemetzkin, the Russian pianist, a short, corpulent man, with an apoplectic face and purplish skin, his thick, iron-gray hair tossed back from his forehead. Next to the German giantess sat the Italian tenor—the tiniest of men—pale, with soft, light hair, much in disorder, very red lips, and fingers yellowed by ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... April and, during the breeding season, which lasts until July, two broods are raised. The nests are made of fine grass and rest in the crotches of twigs of the low bushes and hedges. The eggs have a dull or pearly-white ground and are marked with blotches and dots of purplish and reddish brown. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... human urine, and then allowed to ferment: the fermentation, we are informed by Professor Burnett, "is kept up for some time by successive additions of urine, until the colour of the materials changes to a purplish-red, and subsequently to a violet or blue. The colour is extremely fugitive, and affords a very delicate chemical test for the presence of an acid. The vapour of sulphuric acid has been thus detected as pervading to some extent ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... do contain birds in May. The cliff swallow and the barn swallow always reoccupy their old nests, when they are found intact; so do some other birds. Again, the hawthorn, or whitethorn, field-fares, belong to English poetry more than to American. The ash in autumn is not deep crimsoned, but a purplish brown. "The ash her purple drops forgivingly," says Lowell in his "Indian-Summer Reverie." Flax is not golden, lilacs are purple or white and not flame-colored, and it is against the law to go trouting in November. The pelican is not a wader any more than ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... we with it—until the sixth morning after our abrupt departure from the Conconil lagoons; when, as day broke and the sun rose, clearing away a light bank of grey cloud on the eastern horizon, a soft, delicate purplish hummock- like protuberance was seen rising out of the sea broad on our larboard bow, which was at once recognised as land, and so reported to Carera. Courtenay and I were in our berths and asleep at the moment; but the cry of "Land ho!" at once aroused ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... float by this afternoon one of the acalepha, apparently about two feet long and shaped generally like a water snake; its tail had fins like that of an eel, of a purplish tinge; I could distinctly see its head and various vessels in its interior for it was quite transparent. We had no net ready but threw a stick with a piece of string attached to it, the string passed under it but in pulling ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... indescribably dirty, unutterably weary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubble on the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest of its owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows, hung agape, and between the purplish parted lips showed the stumps of broken teeth. The eyes blinked weakly at the chief from under lids as colorless as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white head was filthy with plastered mud and twigs, and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... speech for John-James, and he paused with his countenance suffused a deep purplish hue. Ishmael seized his hand and wrung it with a sudden young gust of enthusiasm ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... a purplish ridge ran north, the sun shining low through a pine-clad notch. Southwest of me, little blue peaks pricked the primrose sky; south-east lay endless forests, their green already veiled in an ashy blue bloom. Far down, under me, wound the narrow ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... and immediately ran up one of the passageways, returning in a few moments with a bottle which contained a purplish mixture. At another sign from the Automaton the emissary took a drinking-glass and poured out a portion of the purple fluid. Then he forced the draught between ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... hands present one distorted mass of soreness, swelling, and crusting. In these, pitting invariably follows, while in those cases where the eruption remains distinct, pitting is not certain to occur. A still worse form is that styled "black smallpox," in which the skin becomes of a dark-purplish hue, from the fact that each pustule is a small blood blister, and bleeding occurs from the nose, mouth, etc. These cases are almost, without exception, fatal in ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... known what was going to happen; and he spoke to every one whom he met, saying, 'Good-bye, my friends,' each time. Towards five o'clock he came back just as usual to have dinner with me. He was tired; Jacquotte noticed the purplish flush on his face, but the weather was so very cold that she would not get ready a warm foot-bath for him, as she usually did when she saw that the blood had gone to his head. So she has been wailing, poor thing, through her tears for these two days past, 'If I had only given him ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... the reef. I did not have much sport, as I could see nothing worth shooting, but I was much interested in wading in the warm water to observe the multiform animal life of the reef. There was the "beche-de-mer," the sea-cucumber, yellow or purplish-black, a shapeless mass lying in pools; this is a delicacy highly valued by the Chinese and therefore a frequent article of exportation. The animals are collected, cut open, dried and shipped. There was the ugly muraena, which goes splashing and winding like a snake between ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... replied, somewhat drily, as he looked down at the speaker, a cumbrous matron attired in an over-frilled and over-flounced costume of pale grey, which delicate Quakerish colour rather painfully intensified the mottled purplish-red of her face. "But I am not at all tired, Mrs. Sorrel, I assure you! Don't trouble yourself about me—I'm ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... one advances and asks, "Tobacco? A bit of tobacco?" And he holds out his greenish sleeve and his great hard paw, in which the cracks are full of brown dirt, and the nails purplish. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... seen them coming and descended from his box to open the door. He was a big fellow who held himself erect like a soldier. His swarthy complexion had a patch of purplish bloom spreading itself over the cheek bones which told of constant tavern lounging. A pair of hawk's eyes gleamed from under bushy beetling brows; wide loose lips and a truculent, pugnacious lower jaw completed the picture of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... Turning a purplish scarlet, the unfortunate bourgeoise lost her head, and, floundering in excuses, she was about to complicate the position by some signal piece of awkwardness, when, happily for her, Phellion, attracted ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... carried out to the letter, was futile as a precaution, for, on running into the bathroom one morning when every one else was downstairs, the eldest boy, Ronald, saw, floating in the bath, the body of a hoary-headed old man. It was bloated and purplish blue, and had big, glassy eyes that stared at him in such a hideous, meaningless manner that he uttered a scream of terror and fled. Alarmed at the noise, most of the household ran to see what had happened. Only the Captain remained behind. He knew only too well, and he hid, letting ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... graveyard of the flower-garden. There the scabious mourned, and processions of poppies stretched out in line, with deathly odour, unfolding heavy blooms of feverish brilliance. Sad anemones clustered in weary throngs, pallid as if infected by some epidemic. Thick-set daturas spread out purplish horns, from which insects, weary of life, sucked fatal poison. Marigolds buried with choking foliage their writhing starry flowers, that already reeked of putrefaction. And there were other melancholy flowers also: fleshy ranunculi with rusty ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... expected something very different, became instantly so pale, with a dull purplish hue upon her forehead, that, especially when she had twice essayed with her white lips, in vain, to answer, I expected to see her fall in ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... ruth, The bitterness of love: too long indeed, Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I weed Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer All the bright riches of my crystal coffer To Amphitrite; all my clear-eyed fish, 110 Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze; Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws A virgin light to the deep; my grotto-sands Tawny and gold, ooz'd slowly from far lands By my diligent ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... Spring-time, and semetimes also in the very heat of Summer, a peculiar kind of Mushrom or Excrescence, call'd Uva Quercina, swelling out of the Earth, many growing one close unto another, of the fashion of a Grape, and therefore took the name, the Oak-Grape, and is of a Purplish colour on the outside, and white within like Milk, and in the end of Summer becometh hard and woody. Whether this be the very same kind, I cannot affirm, but both the Picture and Description come very ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... like this. The wind blew warm from the southwest and carried hints of green things growing and the song of birds; he breathed it gratefully into his lungs and let it riot in his hair. The sky was purplish and soft, with heavy, drifting clouds high-piled like a summer storm. It looked like ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... also known as the alligator pear, is a large pear-shaped, pulpy fruit raised principally in the West Indies. It has a purplish-brown skin and contains just one very large seed in the center. The flesh contains considerable fat, and so the food value of this fruit is rather high, being fully twice as great as a like quantity of apples ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... unscrewed the silver top, which formed a tiny cup, and tried to let some of the potent liquor trickle between the purplish lips of the unconscious victor in the cup-winners' match. But more of the liquid was spilled on his face and neck than went into his mouth. The air reeked with the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... foot; second week in May; flowers, large, deep purplish blue with blue and yellow centers; a very ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... solemn, as were ever wrought from chiselled stone. There is a true sympathy between those buildings and the Lombard landscape, which by itself might suffice to prove the originality of their almost unknown architects. The rich colour of the baked clay—finely modulated from a purplish red, through russet, crimson, pink, and orange, to pale yellow and dull grey—harmonises with the brilliant greenery of Lombard vegetation and with the deep azure of the distant Alpine range. Reared aloft above the flat expanse of plain, those square ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... was in store for me. Floating downwards from a great height there came a purplish patch of vapour, small as I saw it first, but rapidly enlarging as it approached me, until it appeared to be hundreds of square feet in size. Though fashioned of some transparent, jelly-like substance, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... counties, where it has stood uninjured for many years. It is a pretty twining evergreen, with the leaves placed on long slender petioles, and palmately divided into usually five leaflets. The sweet-scented flowers, particularly so in the evening, are of a purplish-brown or scarlet-purple, and produced in axillary racemes of from ten to a dozen in each. For covering trellis-work, using as a wall plant, or to clamber over some loose-growing specimen shrub, from which a slight protection will also be afforded, the ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... impersonal lines. It was not until tea was over that Robin suddenly struck a more intimate note again. He had been watching her face in silence for a little while, noticing that it looked very small and pale to-day in its frame of night-dark hair, and that there were faint, purplish ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... little masses of grey hung in the clear sky. Gently Winthrop's oars dipped from time to time, bringing them a little further from the western shore and within fuller view of the opening in the mountains. As they went, a purplish shade came upon the grey masses in the north; — the sunlight colours over Bright Spot took richer and deeper hues of purple and red; the salmon network in the south changed for rose. And then, before they had got far, the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... shell most in vogue among Fuegian belles for neck adornment is a pearl oyster (Margarita violacea) of an iridescent purplish colour, and about half an inch in diameter. It is found adhering to the kelp, and forms the chief food of several kinds of seabirds, among others the "steamer-duck." Shells and shell-fish play a large part in Fuegian domestic (!) economy. A large kind of ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... killed by immersion in boiling water, which causes them to swell to twice their natural size, and are then dried and packed for market. The insects shrivel in drying, and assume the form of irregular grains, fluted and concave. The best sorts have a silvery-grey colour, with a purplish reflection, and seem to be dusted with a white powder. This appearance is often given by means of heavy spar, carbonate of lead, Venice talc, &c. A good lens, however, will mostly expose the fraud; or it may be detected by macerating the insect in water, and allowing ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... hopping or flying from tree to tree in the neighborhood of the nest and doing all he can to induce intruders to withdraw from the neighborhood. The eggs have a light clay-colored ground, marked with obscure blotches of lavender and darker lines, dots, and blotches of purplish brown. The Longspur is a strong flier, and seems to delight in breasting the strongest gales, when all the other birds appear to move with difficulty, and to keep themselves concealed among the grass. While the colors ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... say, that as the days went on and Sunday followed Sunday, the interest in Harris's hair grew and grew; because it didn't stay merely and monotonously green, it took on deeper and deeper shades of green; and then it would change and become reddish, and would go from that to some other color—purplish, yellowish, bluish, and so on—but it was never a solid color. It was always mottled. And each Sunday it was a little more interesting than it was the Sunday before—and Harris's head became famous, and people came from New York, and Boston, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... stout central stem, growing upright to a height of about 2 ft., with close-set, large thick, plain leaves of a light red or purplish hue. The lower leaves are stripped off for use as the plants grow up, and used for the preparation of broth or "Scotch kail," a dish at one time in great repute in the north-eastern districts of Scotland. A very remarkable variety ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... chimney, and in the garden the lady was still moving about—a small yellow creature, with a wrinkled but pleasant face, white curls, and piercing black eyes. She wore a black gown, cut low in the neck, a white kerchief, and bassomy (or purplish) bows in her cap as the child had stated. Just at present she was busy with a spade, and showed an ankle passing neat for her age, as she turned up the neglected mould. When the men plucked up gallantry enough to offer their services, she smiled and thanked ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... longshoreman troubled himself to shave only of a Sunday morning, when, with all the stiff, dark growth cleared away to right and left—for Barber's beard grew almost to his eyes—his nose, though bent and purplish, was fairly like a nose. But with Monday, again the nose took on that personality; and seemed to be crouching and writhing at the center of its mat ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... long and elegantly built, he returned to the platform. All of a sudden the whole little colony of artists appeared, with the master-sculptor at their head—in corpore, as college students say. Miss Burns, too, had come, like the rest of them, carrying three of those purplish-red, long-stemmed roses with deep green leaves which were not yet being ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... no reply from the driver for some time; but instead, Toby heard certain familiar sounds as if the old man were choking, while his face took on the purplish tinge which had so alarmed the boy when he saw it for ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... desire a flower to pick and use for bouquets, then the wild geranium is not your flower. It droops very quickly after picking and almost immediately drops its petals. But the purplish flowers are showy, and the leaves, while rather coarse, are deeply cut. This latter effect gives a certain boldness to the plant that is rather attractive. The plant is found in rather moist, partly shaded portions of the woods. I like this plant in the garden. It adds good colour ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... was afeard you'd git the sky blue instead of purplish and that you'd make the clouds ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... pussy-willows until freezing weather, makes a very interesting sort of bed all by itself, and massed close to it, as if recognizing the family relationship, is the little creeping bush clover with its purplish flowers. ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... drew out a fairy-like little squirt, trimmed in silver. It was a hypodermic syringe. From a case she produced some crystals of a purplish color. ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... bay-window of a spacious bedroom, dignified by an alcove and bright but for the half-drawn shades. It was observed that she wore her second-best robe de chambre, and was otherwise not dressed for the inspection of the best people. So indifferently was her fine hair caught up atop her head that the round purplish spot on her temple was left plainly visible: always ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... first light green it will appear of a deep green, and in a few minutes change to a full sea-green; after which it will alter to a blue, then to a purplish-red; after which, lying an hour or two (if the sun shines) it will be of a deep purple-red, beyond which the sun does no more. But this last beautiful colour, after washing in scalding soap and water, will, on being laid out to dry, be a fair bright crimson ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... Bhot Mas of the Parbatiyas, are called Musa and Gya by the Newars. They are two varieties of the Dolichos soja, the one of which has yellow flowers and white seeds, and the other has black seeds, and purplish flowers. The former is ripe about the 1st of November, the latter about the 1st of September. Their seed and produce are equal to those ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... must never be satisfied with a piece of colour until you have got both: that is to say, every piece of blue that you lay on must be quite blue only at some given spot, nor that a large spot; and must be gradated from that into less pure blue—greyish blue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue, over all the rest of the space it occupies. And this you must do in one of three ways: either, while the colour is wet, mix it with the colour which is to subdue it, adding gradually a little more and a little more; or else, when the colour is quite dry, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... to singing "Auld Lang Syne" with their hands crossed a pink and yellow line rose and fell the entire length of the table. There was an enormous tapping of green wine-glasses. A young man stood up, and Florinda, taking one of the purplish globes that lay on the table, flung it straight at his head. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... white flower, while the mandragoras is described by Pliny as having a yellow flower and white, fleshy roots. But we know that Homer is somewhat confusing in the matter of colours, and it is possible that various shades of the purplish flower of the true mandrake might appear to one observer as white, and to another as yellow. Upon the whole, the probability is that the two names meant one and the same plant, for the characteristics are too peculiar to be alike possessed by ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... is red; when it is fallen, black; and when first dried, it is greyish; it afterwards changes to a purplish grey, powdered over with a ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... make of this; whether to expect a shift of wind and a strong breeze, or whether it merely meant rain, or a thunder-storm. The sun, however, had scarcely set when we got a hint of what was to come, in the shape of a bank of dark, purplish, slate-coloured clouds that began to pile themselves along the eastern horizon, their edges as sharply defined against the clear sky as though the masses had been clipped out of paper. We were to be treated to a thunder-storm, and a pretty severe one, too, if the promise ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... being supposed to be an earth and to come from Japan. It is grown on sandy soil or dry hills, and requires very little labor in cultivation. It is a slender-stemmed, vine-like shrub with oval-shaped leaves and pale purplish flowers in clusters. The seeds germinate in forty days, and the seedlings are transplanted when about nine inches high. When full grown they reach a height of ten feet or more, and after the first year the leaves and branches are regularly gathered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... are about to expand, they shrivel and fall away, leaving a tuft of greenish yellow stamens in the center. Is it A. Hudsoni? Another species not often seen, but well worth culture, is A. coerulea, a kind with finely cut leaves and purplish blue flowers. Then A. coronaria, The Bride, a pure creamy white kind, with flowers 3 inches across, raised by Van Velsen, of Haarlem, is really a good addition to these dainty blossoms, and affords a vivid contrast to the fiery A. fulgens. I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... something," she said. "There are three pairs of party slippers and the toes of them are all stuffed with these." She handed the doctor a package of innocent looking tablets done up in purplish ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... know what a first-rate substitute for roast oysters these are?" asked Alan, twirling the great metal spider with purplish back and spiral wire legs that hung from the ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... eyes, as though she were trying to remember what she had to write, and then one could see her beautiful eyes, so blue that compared with them the turquoise depths of the Archipelago would look pale and faded. Her face was white as the sea-foam, pink as the dawn, with purplish Syrian lips and waves of golden hair. She was beautiful, the most beautiful being on earth—beautiful as the dawn, as a flower, as light, as song! This ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,

... very little. Even Wilson's superb nerves had felt the strain of the afternoon, and under the girl's dark eyes were purplish shadows. She leaned back, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... brick-red, weather-beaten face took on a darker, almost a purplish, hue, and the hand that had been holding the mantelpiece ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... cuckoo to make a spring. I confess that only yesterday I saw three sulphur butterflies, with my own eyes; I admit the catkins, and the silver-notched palm; and I am told on good colour-authority that there is a lovely purplish bloom, almost like plum-bloom, over certain copses in the valley; by taking thought, I have observed the long horizontal arms of the beech growing spurred with little forked branches of spear-shaped buds, and I see little green nipples pushing out through the wolf-coloured ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... scoriae vomited forth during its continuance welded three islets, which had hitherto been separate, to the principal island, of which they now form part. On entering the Bay of Santorin we see on every side banks of lava, beds of scoriae, and piles of cinders of a purplish-gray color rising in cliffs to a height of more than 1,312 feet. All these materials are the result of innumerable eruptions, and the central crater of the volcano is probably situated about the middle of the bay. It is supposed that at one ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... matter are of the most diversified shapes, often spherical or oval, sometimes much elongated, or quite irregular with thread- or necklace-like or club-formed projections. They consist of thick, apparently viscid matter, which in the exterior tentacles is of a purplish, and in the short distal tentacles of a greenish, colour. These little masses incessantly change their forms and positions, being never at rest. A single mass will often separate into two, which afterwards reunite. Their movements are rather slow, and resemble those of Amoebae ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... becoming pale reddish purple when dry. Mr. Laxton has cultivated the tall sugar-pea during twenty years, and has never seen or heard of it producing a purple pod: nevertheless, a flower fertilised by pollen from the purple-pod yielded a pod clouded with purplish-red which Mr. Laxton kindly gave to me. A space of about two inches in length towards the extremity of the pod, and a smaller space near the stalk, were thus coloured. On comparing the colour with that of the purple pod, both pods having been first dried and then soaked in water, it was ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... certainly did not know him, but only odd bits of him; and he was doubtful whether he knew Sir Paul. He saw an obese man of sixty sitting in the very chair that a few moments ago had been occupied by Carthew the chauffeur, a man with big purplish features and a liverish eye, a man smoking a plutocratic and heavenly cigar and eating it at the same time, a man richly dressed and braided and jewelled, a man whose boots showed no sign of a crease, an obvious millionaire of the old type, in short a man who was practically all prejudices ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... strengthened on the sides with a few dry twigs, stems, and roots, and lined with fine grasses. The eggs are often six in number, of a yellowish or clayey-white, blotched and marbled with dashes of purple, light brown, and purplish gray. Pretty eggs ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... ordinary low frequency discharge is passed through moderately rarefied air, the air assumes a purplish hue. If by some means or other we increase the intensity of the molecular, or atomic, vibration, the gas changes to a white color. A similar change occurs at ordinary pressures with electric impulses of very high frequency. If the molecules of the air around a wire are moderately ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding the tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... overlooking the Cedar Garden. The room in which he sat was the state bedroom of the old house. It had a marvellous paper of branching trees and parrots and red-robed Chinamen, in the taste of the morning room downstairs, a carved four-post bed, a grate adorned with purplish Dutch tiles, an array of family miniatures over the mantelpiece, and on a neighbouring wall a rack of old swords and rapiers. The needlework hangings of the bed were full of holes; the seats of the Chippendale chairs were ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fine features, rolling black eyes, and luxuriant curled hair, was one of us. The hands were well formed and delicate; the complexion silky, and of nearly an olive tint; but the purplish-red broke through upon his cheeks, giving the earnest of health, as well as adding to the picturesque beauty of his face. The form was perfect, and full of manly expression, and the pretty sky-blue plaited pantaloons and close-fitting ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... in a heavy stupor, so like death that one could not detect it from any motion. Her eyes were half open, her face had a dull purplish tint. The abundant hair had been confined in a thick plait, and brushed straight across her forehead. How distinct and finely clear the brows were pencilled, how haughtily sweet the curve of the pallid, fever-burned lips, how exquisitely round ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... a purple moon—no other colour that man could name. It looked almost unreal, like a paper moon painted very badly by a clumsy stage-hand. The jungle-moon quite often has that peculiar purplish tint, most travellers know, but few of them indeed ever try to tell what causes it. This particular moon probed down here and there between the tall bamboos, transformed the jungle—just now waking—into a mystery and a fairyland, glinted on a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... not know what they were, or how they grew, but he had learned in his father's store that ink was often made from galls gathered from trees. "Anyway," he thought, "I can get ink from the cuttle-fish." He had watched this animal get away from its enemies by sending out a cloud of purplish fluid, in which to hide as it darted away. He had learned also that indigo is made from the leaves of a plant. He had noticed a plant growing in the open places in the forest whose leaves turned ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison

... an exhausted glass tube itself. Mounting such a globe of glass on an axis so that it could be revolved rapidly by a belt running on a large wheel, he found that by holding his fingers against the whirling globe a purplish glow appeared, giving sufficient light so that coarse print could be read, and the walls of a dark room sensibly lightened several feet away. As air was admitted to the globe the light gradually diminished, and it seemed to him ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... this bath can best be described as purplish in color. They are decidedly more pleasing than those of 7 or 8, but are not as good as the best by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... of a red, a yellow, and a blue colouring matter, when concentrated enough, will not let any light pass through it, and can thus be used for the production of blacks, and this property is made use of in dyeing. And now we see why a little yellow dye is added to our coal-tar black. A purplish shade would else be produced; the yellow used is a colour complementary to that purple, and it absorbs just those blue and purple rays of the spectrum necessary to illuminate by radiation that ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... the former was dull yellow in colour, with a thin beard over the cheeks and around the lips. The lips were negro-like, thick, and purplish, and behind them appeared a double row of large wolfish teeth. The eyes were sunken—their whites mottled with yellowish flakes. Heavy dark brows shadowed them, standing far apart, separated by the broad flatfish nose, the nostrils of which ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... Enclave loomed up before him. Behind them, just visible in the purplish twilight haze, were the tips of the shining towers of the Earther city outside. Somewhere out there, probably, ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... season, but much more abundantly on the islands in the north. Their single eggs are laid in burrows in the ground or else in natural crevices formed by the rocks. The eggs are pure white or pale buff and are without gloss. They very often have barely perceptible shell markings of dull purplish color. The eggs are laid about the middle of June. Size 2.80 x 1.90. Data.—Farallone Is., May 27, 1887. Single egg laid in crevice of ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... entrance to the Bois de Boulogne. There was a sense of order and security in the air. I took a seat on the terrace of a little restaurant. The garcon was a small man in the fifties, inclined to corpulence, with a large head, large, blue-gray eyes, purplish lips, and blue-black hair cut pompadour. As we watched the orderly, Sunday crowds going to the great park, we fell into conversation about the calmness of Paris. "Yes, it is calm," he said; "we are all waiting (nous attendons). We know that the victory will be ours at the finish. But all we can ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan



Words linked to "Purplish" :   chromatic



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