August 13 Word of the Day: Auriferous
A
Glossary of Everyday Colours
umbrageous
shady;
yielding shade
“purple
paths umbrageous in white heat”
testudineous
resembling
the shell of a tortoise
“a
deliberately slow reader, his text reflected in testudineous frames”
quiddany
marmalade;
confection of quinces made with sugar
“their
hi-vis lunchtime made a queue of quiddany”
plunket
a
kind of blue colour
“the
sea was as plunket as they had ever seen it”
melliferous
productive
of honey
“melliferous
the clouds at sunrise”
lutarious
living
in mud; of the colour of mud
“the
wash-up is a fashion for lutarious home exteriors”
holland
fine
linen made in Holland
“japan
the master’s gold landscape, his clouds holland”
herbescent
growing
into herbs
“in
watercolour she had perfected herbescent abstraction”
erubescent
reddish;
somewhat red; inclining to redness
“angry
traffic halted at erubescent lights”
darkling
a
participle, as it seems, from darkle, which yet I have never found; being
in the dark; being without a light; a word merely poetical
“a
blackness darkling where naught may be found”
cerulifick
having
the power to produce a blue colour
“musicians
famed for their cerulifick techniques”
auriferous
that
which produces gold
“acacias
again auriferous in August”
[Selections
from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]
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