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Vermilion   /vərmˈɪljən/   Listen
Vermilion

noun
1.
A variable color that is vivid red but sometimes with an orange tinge.  Synonyms: orange red, scarlet.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Vermilion" Quotes from Famous Books



... It was almost a tunnel, for the fronds of the coco palms and the branches of the red-trunked gumbo limbo, and of live oak formed an arch overhead, from which hung long, listless streamers of Spanish moss. The red rays touched the hanging tips of the moss, as if the streamers had been dipped in vermilion, and it tinted softly the palm fronds, wet with the ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... cloth suited to Indian wants. But there were added minor articles of use and fancy to please the youth or captivate the imagination of the women in the tribes. Combs, pocket mirrors, hatchets, knives, jew's-harps, pigments for painting the face blue, yellow, and vermilion, and other such things, were stored away in the canoe, to be spread out as temptations before the eyes of some group of savages rich in a winter's catch of furs. The cloths sold by the traders were ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... told, that, when the spring came fully on, the Indians would have the "Red Tamahnous," which means "love." A little, gray old woman appeared yesterday morning at our door, with her cheeks all aglow, as if her young blood had returned. Besides the vermilion lavishly displayed on her face, the crease at the parting of her hair was painted the same color. Every article of clothing she had on was bright and new. I looked out, and saw that no Indian had on any ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... rivers, they carried their canoes across, and launched their little barks on the Wisconsin. Down this river they would float to the great mysterious stream that would carry them they knew not whither, perhaps to the Sea of Virginia (the Atlantic), perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... a large holder of all manner of Duluth securities upon terms that, upon the clearest showing, would have been ridiculously favourable to me. The principal object of my visit to Duluth was to discover if any settlement existed at the Vermilion Lakes, eighty miles to the north and not far from the track of the Expedition, a place which had been named to the military authorities in Canada as likely to form a base of attack for any filibusters who would be adventurous enough to make a dash at the communication of the expeditionary ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... an unlucky gust turned aside Kate's veil of real Flanders point; and the two innocents, like silly sheep, were staring into each other's eyes without either apology or rebuke. It did seem as though Kate were not without knowledge of the courtly beau: a rich and glowing vermilion came across her neck and face, like the gorgeous blush of evening upon the cold bosom of a snow-cloud. But the youth eyed her with a cool and deliberate glance, stepping aside carelessly as he passed by. She seemed to writhe with some concealed anguish; yet her lip curled proudly, and her ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... great volume from the lower shelf,—a folio in massive oaken covers with clasps like prison hinges, bearing the stately colophon, white on a ground of vermilion, of Nicholas Jenson and his associates. He opened the volume,—paused over its blue and scarlet initial letter,—he turned page after page, admiring its brilliant characters, its broad, white marginal rivers, and the narrower white creek that separated the black-typed twin-columns,—he turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... on its calm unruffled breast Rears the old mossy arch impressed, That clasps its secret stream of glass, Half hid in shrubs and waving grass, The wood-nymph's lone secure retreat, Unpress'd by fawn or sylvan's feet, We'll watch in eve's ethereal braid The rich vermilion slowly fade; Or catch, faint twinkling from afar The first glimpse of the eastern star; Fair vesper, mildest lamp of light, That heralds in imperial night: Meanwhile, upon our wondering ear, Shall rise, though low, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... and have fringes heavy with thread of gold. Gilding is as common among this distant people as among ourselves, and at once shows a familiarity with the art of the gold beater, and a sensibility to the beauty of a golden surface; and in the painted ornaments I detected the rich tints of vermilion and crimson lake, with the mineral blues, yellows, and greens. In the Egyptian department, though the blanching influences of three thousand years had dimmed the tints and tarnished the metals, I found evidence of the same regard to hue and lustre as exists ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... air brought color into her companion's usually pale face, but not of an attractive kind, for the north-east wind that deepened the vermilion in the beauty's cheek could only tinge that of the other with a ghastly blue. The ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... a grove of cottonwoods opposite the mouth of Vermilion River, we could plainly see the great portal a mile or two away, the Gate of Lodore, where all this tranquillity would end, for the river cuts straight into the heart of the mountains forming one of the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... hour for death had come, He slowly rais'd himself from the bed on the floor, Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist, Call'd for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,) Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt—then lying down, resting moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... passed over them. As the sun set, an exquisite thin cherry light shone evenly on the hills and bluffs, and on the thin and naked trees that stood up like wands in this eerie and clarified light. In the distance there was a faint vermilion in the sky, and where the tree stumps fringed the bare hills, they gave the suggestion of a band of violet edging the land. And all this in an air as clear and shining as still water. It seemed to me that Canada was ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... persons in the wigwam were two Indian girls, one about eighteen, Jane, the hunter's eldest daughter, and her cousin Margaret. I was greatly struck with the beauty of Jane; her features were positively fine, and though of gipsey darkness the tint of vermilion on her cheek and lip rendered it, if not beautiful, very attractive. Her hair, which was of jetty blackness, was soft and shining, and was neatly folded over her forehead, not hanging loose and disorderly in shaggy masses, as is generally the case with the squaws. Jane was evidently aware of her ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd; 50 And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... was Sardanapalus.... And so, when Arbaces, who was one of the generals under him, a Mede by birth, endeavoured to manage by the assistance of one of the eunuchs, whose name was Sparamizus, to see Sardanapalus: and when ... he saw him painted with vermilion, and adorned like a woman, sitting among his concubines, carding purple wool, and sitting among them with his feet up, wearing a woman's robe, and with his beard carefully scraped, and his face smoothed with pumice stone (for he was whiter than milk, and pencilled under his eyes and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... of a Highlander "in full fig," with bright tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was glorious ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... toppling down, bearing with it two dead birds, that in a recent storm had crept into one of the deeper fissures, to die in the shelter. I felt a new interest in examining them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe, was variegated with light blue and a grayish yellow. I was engaged in admiring ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... if there were only one madman in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is something else ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... at the same time causing his head to move slightly from side to side in the fashion of one who rebukes with assumed geniality; and, turning over the written paper, he displayed upon the under side the Imperial vermilion Sign. "Perhaps," he continued, "the omniscient person will still continue in his remarks, even with the evidence of the Emperor's unerring pencil ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... box, marked with streaks Of bright vermilion, by the shrine, The key whereof has lain for weeks Untouched, he'll find some coin,—'tis mine. That will enable him to pay The bracelet's price, now fare thee well!" She spoke, the pedlar went away, Charmed with her voice, as by some spell; While she left lonely there, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... sky burned over Egypt,—red with deep intensity of spreading fire. The slow-creeping waters of the Nile washed patches of dull crimson against the oozy mud-banks, tipping palms and swaying reeds with colour as though touched with vermilion, and here and there long stretches of wet sand gleamed with a tawny gold. All Cairo was out, inhabitants and strangers alike, strangers especially, conceiving it part of their "money's worth" never to miss a sunset,—and beyond Cairo, where the Pyramids lifted their summits ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... threw down the rod, and kneeling on the ground behind her, he unbuttoned his pantaloons, and out leaped his staff of love, stiff, firm and with its ruby head uncovered. He nestled it for a moment between her buttocks, and then gently driving the vermilion lips of her coral sheath with his fingers, he brought his instrument to bear on the luscious opening, and seizing her by the hips, in another moment he was plunged to the very hilt in her beautiful body. When Margaret felt that the conjunction was complete she ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival

... be written in vermilion ink," replied Weng, regaining an impassive dignity; "and upon that darker half of my heart can now be ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... well enough," said Brace, drawing a dull vermilion-colored stone from his pocket; "but here's something I picked up just now that ain't 'played out,' nor even the value of it suspected by those fellows. That's cinnabar—quicksilver ore—and a big per cent. of it too; and if there's as much of it ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... vermilion, Your ravishing shape, The flogging postillion, The village agape, The rattle and thunder Of postchaise a-speed . . . My woman, my wonder, ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit

... guess I'm laying for that lawyer. Couldn't get at him inside there for a barrier. Am I a low-grade perjurer—and my friend what he was working round to show? If you'll stand by for just two minutes I'll convince the insect—the blamed, vermilion, mosquito!" ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... some atom of their molten substance should spatter over the edge of the precipice. Sometimes the whole lake is in motion. Waves of fire toss and battle with each other and dash in clouds of bright vermilion spray against the black sides of the pit. Sometimes one of these sides falls in with a roar that echoes back and forth, and mighty rocks are swallowed in the liquid mass of fire that closes over them in a whirlpool, like water over a ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... was followed by two paddles painted a bright vermilion, and as they were placed in her, and she was laid to one side of the deck, she was indeed as pretty a little craft as can be imagined, and one that ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... the velvet texture of the skin, though it kindly left no other traces, and her cheek was still so soft and delicate that her mother's kiss made a momentary red mark upon it. Her nose was somewhat too thick, but it harmonized well with the vermilion mouth, whose lips, creased in many lines, were full of love and kindness. The throat was exquisitely round. The bust, well curved and carefully covered, attracted the eye and inspired reverie. It lacked, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... hanged if I can describe this red - it's not Turkish and it's not Roman and it's not Indian, but it seems to partake of the two last, and yet it can't be either of them, because it ought to be able to go with vermilion. Ah, what a tangled web we weave - anyway, with what brains you have left choose me and send me some - many - ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... radical changes in many substances was known to the ancients. Its destructive action on artists' pigments, e.g., the blackening of vermilion, was recorded 2,000 years ago by Vitruvius. Since that time it has been well established, by numerous observations and experiments, that light possesses, in a high degree, the power of exerting chemical action, i.e., ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... on the floor. The animal had lain there only a few moments, when another weasel, coming from the same hole, ran up, and attempted awhile to sport with it, and then, after exhibiting every appearance of grief, suddenly ran off into the wood, and returned with a flower of a beautiful vermilion colour, which it carefully inserted into the mouth of the dead animal. The effect was sudden, the weasel instantaneously got upon its legs, and was preparing to escape; when the lady exclaimed to the page, to strike it again, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... handful of the sleek, cool-fleshed fruit. Cherries touched his ears and his neck as he stretched forward, their chill finger-tips sending a flash down his blood. All shades of red, from a golden vermilion to a rich crimson, glowed and met his eyes ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... our lodgings we entered the hut of the deceased, and found him on his bed of state, dressed in his finest cloaths, his face painted with vermilion, shod as if for a journey, with his feather-crown on his head. To his bed were fastened his arms, which consisted of a double-barreled gun, a pistol, a bow, a quiver full of arrows, and a tomahawk. Round his bed were placed all the calumets of peace he had received ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... was allowed to prowl about in the scriptorium of the Abbey of Montmirail which lay by the Canche side, he found his wood again. It was in a Psaltery on which a hundred years before some Flemish monk had lavished his gold and vermilion. Opposite the verse of Psalm xxiii., "In loco pascuae," was a picture almost the same as that in the bedroom arras. There were the river, the meadows, and the little wood, painted in colours far brighter than the tapestry. Never was such bloom of green or such depth of blue. But there ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... her eighteenth year; the freshness of her complexion was dazzling, but the carnation tint of her cheeks, the vermilion of her lips, and the dark, very narrow curve of her eyebrows, impressed me as being produced by art rather than nature. Her teeth—two rows of magnificent pearls—made one overlook the fact that her mouth was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... number of the enemy lying slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright red blood that in places shone a brilliant vermilion where it was touched by the glintings of the sun. Among the dead I did not see Tizoc's body, and for this I was glad. Half a dozen of the enemy stood by us as a guard; but these suffered us to minister to each other, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... him as the air. There are soft engravings on the wall. This study-chair was made out of the twisted roots of a banyan. A dog, sleek-skinned, lies on the mat, and gets up as you come in. There stand in vermilion all the poets from Homer to Tennyson. Here and there are chamois heads and pressed seaweed. He writes on gilt-edged paper with a gold pen and handle twisted with a serpent. His inkstand is a mystery of beauty which unskilled ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... from that vermilion placard. It began to dawn on me that I had undertaken rather a large order in showing this Oriental ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... into Bursley. Hair-dyeing might have grown popular in the town if one night, owing to some confusion with red ink, the Chairman of the Bursley Burial Board had not emerged from Jock-at-a-Venture's with a vermilion top-knot and been greeted on the pavement by his waiting wife with the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... Babylonian invasion. He seems to have had all the vices of Eastern sovereigns. He was covetous, cruel, tyrannous, lawless, heartless, senseless. He was lavishing money on a grand palace, built with cedar and painted in vermilion, when the nation was in its death-throes. He had neither valour nor goodness, and so little did he understand the forces at work in his times that he held by the rotten support of Egypt against the grim power of Babylon, and of course, when the former was driven ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... long bamboo, into which it drops as they hook it off. The outer part, which we should call the fruit, being removed, the mace is carefully taken off, and dried on large shallow bamboo baskets in the sun. Its bright colour now changes to a dark yellow. The black part seen within the vermilion mace is a shell, and inside this is the nutmeg. When the mace is removed, the nuts are spread out on shallow trays of open basket-work in a drying-room. A slow fire is made beneath the floor, where the nuts remain for three months. By this time the nutmeg has shrunk so ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... the other hand, And in a hollow voice he spake, and said:— "Sohrab, that were a proof which could not lie! If thou show this, then art thou Rustum's son." Then, with weak hasty fingers, Sohrab loosed His belt, and near the shoulder bared his arm, And show'd a sign in faint vermilion points Prick'd; as a cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, An emperor's gift—at early morn he paints, And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp Lights up his studious forehead ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... fell, her rosy nostrils dilated, her vermilion lips were half open, as if she again inhaled with rapture pure ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... of its colouring, I had some of the water brought on shore, and, on examination with the microscope, it proved to be filled with infusoria, probably similar to those which have been noticed near the shores of South America, and whose abundance has imparted a name to the "Vermilion Sea" off ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... bearing the device of the Kragan riever-chieftain whose family had built the castle; now it carried a neat rectangle of blue bunting emblazoned with the wreathed globe of the Terran Federation and, below that, the blue-gray pennant which bore the vermilion trademark ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... vestry came to me about the case, I reminded them that Aholah and Aholibah were damned for doting upon paintings on the wall, painted in vermilion, which in plain English is Scarlett!" A covenanting gleam shot into his frosty eyes, and the old fighting Scotch blood showed for a second in his lank cheek. He was a godly man, and when he saw confusion in the ranks of the Philistines, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... well known at functions of the sort, and the embarrassing promiscuousness which seats the chaste, modest smile of the virtuous woman beside the eyes blazing with kohl and the lips streaked with vermilion of the other kind. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and face paint. Higher up, the boxes present the same scene of confusion: actresses and courtesans, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics solemn of manner and frowning, lying back in their chairs with the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... gave orders for the dessert to be served, whereupon the slaves took away all the tables and brought in others, and sprinkled the floor with sawdust mixed with saffron and vermilion, and also with powdered mica, a thing I had never seen done before. When all this was done Trimalchio remarked, "I could rest content with this course, for you have your second tables, but, if you've something especially ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... to deep vermilion hue Adds that sweet odour gracious Nature gives, When his proud glory gladdens every view, And no base worm within his beauties lives, We nothing question of what sex it be, Nor ask more of it than that it should lend His lovely gaze for ravish'd eye to see, ...
— Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost • Gregory Thornton

... nature of that country. There are hills, rounded, blunt, burned, squeezed up out of chaos, chrome and vermilion painted, aspiring to the snow-line. Between the hills lie high level-looking plains full of intolerable sun glare, or narrow valleys drowned in a blue haze. The hill surface is streaked with ash drift ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... addition to which, Nathan stripped from one a light Indian hunting-shirt, from another a blanket, a woman's shawl, and a medicine bag, from a third divers jingling bundles of brooches and hawk-bells, together with a pouch containing vermilion and other paints, the principal articles of savage toilet; which he made up into a bundle, to be used for a purpose he did not conceal from his comrades. He then seized upon the rifles of the dead (from among which Stackpole had already singled out his own), and removing the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... cases, and also in this Chiriqui ware, there is no trace of color remaining and we are left to surmise that the brush used probably contained merely a "taking out" medium. Red was profusely used and varies from a light vermilion to a deep maroon. In certain classes of vessels it was hastily daubed on, covering prominent parts of the surface or forming irregular spots, streaks, and rude figures. In two groups of ware it was used as the chief delineating color. In ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... the restaurant an apparition which momentarily stopped every conversation in the room. It was a tall and mature woman who wore over a dress of purplish-black silk a vast flowing sortie de bal of vermilion velvet, looped and tasselled with gold. No other costume could live by the side of that garment, Arab in shape, Russian in colour, and Parisian in style. It blazed. The woman's heavy coiffure was bound with fillets of gold braid ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... James was having the time of his life. He was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton's Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... place, it may be observed, that the blood which returns by the vena cava to the heart, is of a dark colour inclining to purple; while that which passes from the left ventricle into the arteries, is of a bright vermilion hue. The blood which is found in the pulmonary artery has the same dark purple colour with that in the vena cava, while that in the pulmonary vein resembles the aortal blood in its brightness. Hence it would appear, that the blood, during its passage through the ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... gripping the arms of her chair. Then she rose suddenly, throwing up her head. The intensity of her emotion fanned the dull coals of hate in her eyes to a hard brilliance and touched her white cheeks with vermilion. Vivid, active, her beautiful face, passion-drawn and cruel, red curls writhing and twisting upon her shoulders, Tess seemed a veritable fury crying for vengeance. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... leader of the Apaches was horrible to look at. He was naked save for a breechcloth and boot moccasins and his face was daubed with ocher and vermilion. Across his lean chest, too, was a smear of paint just under the necklace of bear claws that gave him his name. He was armed with a .50-caliber Sharps single-shot rifle and with the only revolver in the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... new to him. He was vaguely troubled by its splendour. No tender memories stirred his American bosom at the Place du Chatelet, nor even by Notre Dame. The Palais de Justice with its clock and turrets and stalking sentinels in blue and vermilion, the Place St. Michel with its jumble of omnibuses and ugly water-spitting griffins, the hill of the Boulevard St. Michel, the tooting trams, the policemen dawdling two by two, and the table-lined terraces of the Cafe Vacehett were nothing to him, as yet, nor did he even know, when he stepped from ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... Tartar City enclosing the Imperial City, and that in turn the Forbidden City. If you stand under the many-storied tower that surmounts the Chien-Men, you look straight along the road that leads through the vermilion walls, right into the Purple City, the heart of Peking. In Marco Polo's time the middle door of the great portal was never opened save to admit the emperor, and that was still true a few months ago, but last winter a day came when the bars ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... green leaves. The roadside was gay with flowers,—gillias and mountain balm; high pink and purple spikes, like foxgloves, which they were told were pentstemons; painters' brush, whose green tips seemed dipped in liquid vermilion, and masses of the splendid wild poppies. They crossed a foaming little river; and a sharp turn brought them into a narrower and wilder road, which ran straight toward the mountain side. This was overhung by trees, whose shade was ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... therefore if Charon snarleth at thee, thou now mayest well know what his speech signifies." This ended, the dark plain trembled so mightily, that the memory of the terror even now bathes me with sweat. The tearful land gave forth a wind that flashed a vermilion light which vanquished every sense of mine, and I fell as ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... hoarded is his richest store, And circling smoke obscures his little door; Whence creeping forth, to duty's call he yields, And strolls the Crusoe of the lonely fields. On whitethorns tow'ring, and the leafless rose, A frost-nipt feast in bright vermilion glows: Where clust'ring sloes in glossy order rise, He crops the loaded branch; a cumb'rous prize; And o'er the flame the sputt'ring fruit he rests, Placing green sods to seat his coming guests; His guests by promise; playmates ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... and sometimes fancying I could understand by what masses and contrasts the artist arrived at his effect. In many others of the pictures parts of his method are painfully obvious, and you see how grief and agony are produced by blue lips, and eyes rolling blood shot with dabs of vermilion. There is something simple in the practice. Contort the eyebrow sufficiently, and place the eyeball near it,—by a few lines you have anger or fierceness depicted. Give me a mouth with no special expression, and pop a dab of carmine at each ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the roseate oval two flame-tipped shadows appeared, stood for a moment, and then seemed to float out upon its surface. The shadows wavered; the tips of flame that nimbused them with flickering points of vermilion pulsed outward, drew back, darted forth again, and once more withdrew themselves—and as they did so the shadows thickened—and suddenly there ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... back to mind the vermilion mark [1] at the parting of your hair, the sari [2] which you used to wear, with its wide red border, and those wonderful eyes of yours, full of depth and peace. They came at the start of my life's journey, like the first streak of dawn, giving me golden provision ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... it at times," he acknowledged. "But to-night, sitting here, the mere thought of it is almost hateful to me. It is all vermilion and orange colour, while this . ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... turn soon after calm as balm or oil. Winds have their time to rage; but when they cease The leafy trees nod in a still-born peace. Your storm is over; lady, now appear Like to the peeping springtime of the year. Off then with grave clothes; put fresh colours on, And flow and flame in your vermilion. Upon your cheek sat icicles awhile; Now let the rose reign like a queen, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... helmet with my own hands in the shape of a fish's head, covering it with the skin of a seal. To make it more terrible I have put on it the horns of a bull and I have given it a boar's jaws; I have hung from it a horse's tail dyed vermilion. When in the gloomy twilight I threw it over my shoulders no inhabitant of this island had courage to withstand its sight. Women and children, young men and old men fled distracted at its approach, and I carried terror among the whole race of Penguins. By what ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... standing in the centre of the carpet under a brass gaselier, of which the burnish had perished in patches; and in the centre of the table stood a round-topped glass case containing a stuffed kestrel, with a stuffed lark prostrate under its talons and bleeding vermilion wax. Around this ornament were disposed, as the Doctor had promised, a number of albums and illustrated books, one of which he chose and placed it in her hands, at the same time bringing forward one of a suite of rosewood chairs ranged with their backs to the walls. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... crash and a tinkle of glass as the bottle of red ink struck the penthouse roof just over the beast's head and deluged it with its vermilion contents. Eset reared, shook her neck, gave a defiant grunt and swiftly withdrew her head ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... The vermilion sun was low in the sky above the purpling mountains; the stream had changed from a crystalline brown to red, to gold, and now it was beginning to be purple and silver. And this reminded her that the full-moon was up, and ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... possibly, though I scarcely think so, for there were curves to her lips such as I have never seen in any other, and a delicate turn to her nostril that at times made me feel as if she were breathing fire. Her skin was pale, her forehead broad and low, her nose straight, and her lips of a brilliant vermilion. I, however, saw only her eyes, though I may have been influenced by the rest of her bewildering physiognomy; they were so large, so changeful, so full of alternating flames and languor, so indeterminate in ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... river, which emerges a little higher up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. Through rifts in the nearer ranges there are glimpses of pine-clothed peaks, which, towards twilight, pass through every shade of purple and violet. The sky and the earth combine to form a Wonderland ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... quite close to the soil—which gradually diminish in length to its summit. The small white blossom of the coffee tree is not unlike jessamine in shape and also in odour. The fruit, green in its youth, gradually becomes of a yellowish tint and then of a bright vermilion when quite ripe—except in the Botucatu kind, which remains yellow to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the corners of her mouth to the middle of each cheek were two parallel lines, and below these several upright stripes; on various parts of her back and shoulders were curiously entwined circles, and the form of a snake was depicted in vermilion down each arm. Unlike the others, she wore no ornament except a simple necklace of monkeys' teeth. This beauty was particularly active in manufacturing the intoxicating ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... make me feel so very naughty. It seemed to say, "My poor, little, despicable insect, how could you dream of supposing that your intellect was even with Mine?" (There, I have writ that a capital M in red ink. To have answered to Dame Hilda's tone when she put that smile on, it should have been in vermilion and gold leaf.) Howbeit, Jack never cared for all the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... to the calling voice of flutes, Glides my heart into thy fingers, O my Love! Where the night-wind, like a lover, leans above His jasmine-gardens and sirisha-bowers; And on ripe boughs of many-coloured fruits Bright parrots cluster like vermilion flowers. ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu

... enough. The judge sitting in the basilica would have it as part of his insignia of office. On the judgment hall being turned into a church, the Umbrella remained, and in fact occupied the place of the canopy over thrones and the like in our own country. Beatiano, an Italian herald, says that "a vermilion Umbrella in a field argent ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... motor, which was new and a fairer creature than the vermilion giant that had borne Aunt Juley to her doom ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... strong, his hands full and large, his feet firm and solid. He stooped a little, but through habit only, and not on account of any deformity. He was fair, but on his cheeks there was an agreeable mixture of vermilion. His hair was not loose over his shoulders, according to the fashion of the barbarians, but was cut above his ears. His eyes were blue, and full of wrath and fierceness. His nostrils were large, inasmuch as having a wide chest and a great heart, his lungs required an unusual ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... fingers, Sohrab loos'd His belt, and near the shoulder bar'd his arm, And shew'd a sign in faint vermilion points Prick'd: as a cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, 670 An emperor's gift—at early morn he paints, And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands:— So delicately prick'd the ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... washing powder; only started a few days. Big vans, painted vermilion and indigo, going about town and suburbs distributing handbills and ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... common but noble forest trees; but their beauty is not, even then, lost. They give variety of hues to the forests which they fringe or help to form; variety of shapes, and always exquisite, spicy, and healthful odors. But when the autumn comes, with its infinitely varied tintings of orange and vermilion; when the frost works its wonders, and the wooded hills are clothed with splendor—then the rich groups of our native evergreens rise in their immortality of freshness. How exquisitely their bright unfading green sets off and contrasts with the rich golds, glowing scarlets, russet browns, purples, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... me. [Servant hands package wrapped in vermilion silk, and exit; as GUIDO is about to open it the DUCHESS comes up behind, and in ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... sultan of China, a beautiful brunette. "Her eyes were large and sparkling, her expression modest, her mouth small, her lips vermilion, and her figure perfect." She became the wife of Aladdin, but twice nearly caused his death; once by exchanging "the wonderful lamp" for a new copper one, and once by giving hospitality to the false Fatima. Aladdin killed both these magicians.—Arabian Nights ("Aladdin ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... thereon bewitched, until the hand Of Venus, erst withdrawn, now fell again Upon his own, and roused him from his trance. He looked on her, and as he looked, a cloud Auroral, flaming as at sunrising, Arose from nothing, floating over them In luminous folds, like that vermilion mist Penciled upon the throne, and as it waxed In density and brightness, all the throng Of festal dancers, less and less distinct, Grew like pale spirits in a vague, dim dream, And vanished altogether; and these twain, Shut from the world in that ambrosial cloud, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... it is of a dull greenish brown, but when excited its back becomes a rich olive green, leaving the head yellowish: the underside of the body is of a very pale blue, almost approaching white. The open mouth exhibits the fauces of an intense vermilion tint; so that, although extremely handsome, this lizard presents, from its extraordinarily shaped head and threatening gestures, a most malignant aspect. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... it was animated by the presence of hundreds of Indians. There were stately warriors in paint and blankets, young braves stripped to the waist-cloth for a game of ball, maidens whose cheeks were ruddy with vermilion, robed in embroidered and beaded garments of fawn skin, and naked children, frolicking like so many puppies. Save in the occasional scowling face and preoccupied air of some dark-browed warrior, and a slow but noticeable gathering of these near the principal gate of the fort, there ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... over, and Harry had gone, promising to come next day and bring a stake, painted vermilion and white, with a little gilt ball on the top of it, she sat by the ivied window in the brown room ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... shape of dazzling line, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd, And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... stood, the Indians halted in order to make preparations for their fiendish design. Every precaution was taken, even to enhancing their naturally ferocious appearance by painting their faces, necks and shoulders with a thick coat of vermilion. The party next moved forward with stealthy steps to the very edge of the forest, where again they halted in order to mature ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... the majuscules glow and flame in the candle-light, he pressed the thorns into his flesh. At such moments he tasted in all its acute savor the joy of physical pain; and after two or three experiences of such delights he altered his book, making a curious sign in vermilion on the margin of the passages where he was to inflict on himself this sweet torture. Never did he fail to wake at the appointed hour, a strong effort of will broke through all the heaviness of sleep, and he would ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... oil colours in tubes. Those generally needed are silver white, Naples yellow, yellow ochre, brilliant yellow, vermilion, Prussian blue, raw sienna, ivory black, ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... mounted a chair, took down the precious box, dusted it tenderly with her handkerchief, looked within. Such broken odds and ends of his gamboge, his yellow ochre, his Indian ink of which he had prattled to his father, questioning whether carmine or vermilion should be used for the roofs of his absurd houses; if Prussian blue or ultramarine should be for his seas and skies. She saw again the huge man and the little child bending over their pictures on Sunday evenings of long ago, heard the very tones of their voices. Her tears dropped upon the shabby ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... long and fierce, as from out a background of steeple-shaped, honey-combed rocks and sparse trees with large golden leaves—like those on the panels of the great, lacquered cabinets in the Long Gallery—innumerable hordes of fanatic Chinamen poured down on him, a hideous bedizenment of vermilion war-devils painted on their blue tunics and banners and shields. And he, Richard,—or was it he, Witherington?—alone facing them all,—they countless in number, always changing yet always the same. From under their hard, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... consideration is the only one that moves me. I take with me my dog, as a companion, for he is useless as to this game; my gun, for no man you know ought to enter the woods without one; my blanket, some provisions, some wax, vermilion, honey, and a small pocket compass. With these implements I proceed to such woods as are at a considerable distance from any settlements. I carefully examine whether they abound with large trees, if so, I make a small fire on some flat stones, in a convenient place; on the fire ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... With a vermilion pencil mark the day When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront Two of our mates returning with swift oars. One held ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... logs whitened, and small hissing tongues of blue flame crept about them where there had been flares of vermilion. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... support the cross-beams of the roof, which are likewise beautifully ornamented. Sometimes a curly-maned gilt lion is placed over a column, and it is always furnished with a black bushy tail: squares, diamonds, dragons, and groups of flowers, vermilion, green, gold, azure, and white, are dispersed with great artistic taste over all the beams; the heavier masses of colour being separated by fine ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... The purple morning left her crimson bed, And donned her robes of pure vermilion hue, Her amber locks she crowned with roses red, In Eden's flowery gardens gathered new. When through the camp a murmur shrill was spread, Arm, arm, they cried; arm, arm, the trumpets blew, Their merry noise ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... cliffs for more than a hundred miles.' After a description of several valleys, hills, mountains and forests, we come to the discovery of animal life. An oval valley surrounded by hills, red as the purest vermilion, is selected as the scene. 'Small collections of trees, of every imaginable kind, were scattered about the whole of this luxuriant area; and here our magnifiers blessed our panting hopes with specimens ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... purest and most solid ivory, the fall had disconcerted him. His eyes, like those of Shakespeare's poet, rolling in a fine frenzy, did glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. He passed his fingers tenderly through his vermilion hair. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... then, His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen. Sunk were his eyes, his voice was harsh and loud, Sure signs he neither choleric was, nor proud. His long chin proved his wit; his saint-like grace A church vermilion, and a Moses' face. His memory miraculously great, 650 Could plots, exceeding man's belief, repeat; Which therefore cannot be accounted lies, For human wit could never such devise. Some future truths are mingled in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... the judge was wakened by the whistle of a bird, which sounded strange to him. He sat up to look around, and judge his surprise; the so-called bird was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen years of age; fresh, with rosy cheeks and vermilion lips, brown hair, which hung in two long tresses behind her. A short poppy-colored skirt, with a tightly-laced bodice, completed her costume. She was a young peasant, who was rapidly descending the sandy path down the side of Bigelberg, a basket poised on her head, and ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... Colour as perceived by the Eye," in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. XXI. Part 2. The visible effect of the colour is estimated in terms of the standard-coloured papers:—vermilion (V), ultramarine (U), and emerald-green (E). The accuracy of the results, and their significance, can be best understood by referring to the paper before mentioned. I shall denote mineral blue by B, and chrome-yellow by Y; and ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... women to refuse The offer which they most would choose: No fault in women to confess How tedious they are in their dress: No fault in women to lay on The tincture of vermilion, And there to give the cheek a dye Of white, where Nature doth deny: No fault in women to make show Of largeness, when they're nothing so; When, true it is, the outside swells With inward buckram, little else: No fault in women, though they be But seldom from suspicion free: No fault ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... Olive Spread Lethals, 13 Plexus Trident Miniature Purple Truncate intensifier Notch Speck Whitehead Reduplicated Strap White ocelli Ruby Streak Rudimentary Trefoil Sable Truncate Shifted Vestigial Short Skee Spoon Spot Tan Truncate intensifier Vermilion White Yellow ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan

... highbinders, cobblers, pork butchers, and pawnbrokers. The narrow streets and alleys became one seething mass of Asiatic humanity; while the painted belles came out on their balconies like butterflies, sitting among a wealth of gaudy paper flowers that looked pale in comparison with the daubs of vermilion on their cheeks and the rainbow ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... remembered the minister's little comments as he read, how the sermons had impressed themselves upon his heart as he listened, and yet here he was, himself, in hell! He turned over the pages again quickly unable to get away from the picture that grew in his mind, the vermilion towers and minarets, the crags and peaks, the "little brook, whose crimson'd wave, yet lifts my hair with horror," he could see it all as if he had lived there many years. Strange he had not thought before of the likeness of his life to this. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... about a little extra natural vermilion!" exclaims Adolphe. "Complain about it to Providence, whose office it is to put a little more color in one place than another, not to me, who loves you, who desires you to be perfect, and who merely says to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... it was paint!" she said, speaking over her shoulder to the mahout, who, unperceived, held a fold of her white cloak in his hand. "This is paint, surely," she added, running a finger-tip down the vermilion and white lines which covered the great ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... must mix good wine with the colours, if the flesh tints are to be really brilliant. So the Abbess gave him for every Saint, male or female, depicted in his pictures a flask of the wine reserved for Bishops' drinking, which he poured down his throat, trusting to vermilion to bring out the warm tints. The same Lady Abbess it was he deceived, making her take a pitcher with a cloak thrown over it for a master painter, as has ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... the same, And he'll not stay his hand; The poor Jews are fair game In a great "Christian" Land; But the Lord of the Pencil Vermilion Rebukes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various

... babilajxo. Verbose parolegema. Verbosity parolegeco. Verdant verdanta. Verdict jugxo. Verdigris verdigro. Verdure verdajxo. Verger pedelo. Verify verigi, ekzameni. Verily vere. Veritable vera. Verity vereco. Vermicelli vermicxelo. Vermifuge kontrauxvermajxo. Vermilion cinabro. Vermin insektoj. Vermouth vermuto. Verse verso. Verses, to make versi. Versed (learned) klera. Versifier versisto. Version traduko. Verst versto. Vertebra vertebro. Vertebral vertebra. Vertex supro, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... you get back again. On one side stretches a row of rookeries—a maze of hanging clothes, fish-nets, balconies hooded by awnings and topped by nondescript chimneys of all sizes and patterns, with here and there a dab of vermilion and light red, the whole brilliant against a china-blue sky. On the other runs the long brick wall of the garden,—soggy, begrimed; streaked with moss and lichen in bands of black-green and yellow ochre, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a noted beauty: her eyes were large, lively, and sparkling; her smile bewitching; her nose faultless; her mouth small; her lips vermilion. It is not therefore surprising that Aladdin, who had never before seen such a blaze of charms, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten



Words linked to "Vermilion" :   red, chromatic, redness, redden



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