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






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Iris" Quotes from Famous Books



... been very good to me. It seems a little while since the camels came to Argun-Zeerith by the iris marshes, the camels with the gold-hung palanquin, and the bells above their heads, high up in the air, the silver bridal bells. It seems a very little while ago. I did not know how swift the end ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany

... They are beautifully translated by Wiffen.), but the perception of the secret powers of the fountain and the herb,—the Arcana of the unknown nature and the various motions of the stars. His, the holy haunts of Lebanon and Carmel,—beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the hues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews. Did the Christian Hermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of all spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to lay aside these sublime studies, 'Le solite arte e l' uso mio'? No! but to cherish and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... IRIS Surfing barbata foliis ensiformibus glabris, scapo unifloro, petalis rotundatis. Lin. Syst. Vegetab. ed. 14. ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... with her mother to visit her uncle, Joe Tovesky. She was a dark child, with brown curly hair, like a brunette doll's, a coaxing little red mouth, and round, yellow-brown eyes. Every one noticed her eyes; the brown iris had golden glints that made them look like gold-stone, or, in softer lights, like that Colorado ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... endure to the end, expired by the way, and when she was flung with the rest into the dark waters, her soul had already escaped from its earthly tenement. Her body was found the next day, and was buried in the cemetery of the monastery of Saints-Anargyres, where her tomb, covered with white iris and sheltered by a wild ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... shoulders impatiently, coming upon the recumbent child dreamily gazing at his own reflection in the lily-pond, looking necromantically out from the molten purple of a wind-blown beech, or standing at gaze in a clump of iris. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the conventional includes every form—the symbolic, the naturalistic, or even the hieroglyphic—that is selected and consecrated to convey a certain idea. The lily of Florence, which is something between a lily and an iris, but unlike either, is a conventional form; likewise the lily of France, which it is said was once a conventional frog. The rose of England, the shamrock, and the thistle have always been more naturalistic than is usual in such heraldic designs; but the parti-coloured rose of York and Lancaster was ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... the air, but managed to land without a sound and edged toward his stool. Through the dilating iris of the door strode Phineas T. Gryce, flanked by Rose ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... now down the stony slope of the valley, to reach the river bed near its source, with the sides of the thal seeming to grow steeper and higher, and one of the waterfalls they were near infinitely more beautiful, for they had now reached the point necessary for seeing the lovely iris which spanned the cascade, turning its seething spray into a segment of an arch of the most vivid colours, at which the lad seemed disposed to gaze ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... promised that when he did, he would seek them out and purchase them. Their first-born was named Mary, and her complexion was still lighter than her mother. Indeed she was not darker than other white children. As the child grew older, it more and more resembled its mother. The iris of her large dark eye had the melting mezzotints, which remains the last vestige of African ancestry, and gives that plaintive expression, so often observed, and so appropriate to that docile and injured race. Clotel was still happier after the birth of her dear ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... between the eye and the lid, and also the second line forming the lid. Do not line in the lower lid between the eye and the lid, but put in the under line of the lower lid. Next form the pupil, placing it in the centre of the iris, making it very dark; then the iris, noticing in particular that the upper lid throws a shadow on the top of the iris; then the shading of the nose and nostrils and shadows under the nose. The mouth is the next important feature, and, as there are ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt

... house giggling. Then what does it all come to? An attempt to expose the supposed hypocrisy of the Puritan middle class in England: people just as good as the author, anyhow. With, of course, the inevitable improper female: the Mrs Tanqueray, Iris, and so forth. Well, if you cant recognize the author of that, youve mistaken your professions: thats all I ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens. That is the hole through which the light passes. Around it lie the tissues of the iris. In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a film for the ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... straw-color, pink, and purple. I never found such in the mainland valleys; the salt air of the sea deepens the colors of all flowers. I stopped by a swamp which the recent rains had filled and turned to a little lake. Light green iris-leaves cut the water like sharp and slender swords, and, in the low sunshine that streamed across, threw long shadows ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... of her taste and mode of thinking, all the colours by which they are diversified and made interesting would have been reduced to the dead level of hodden-grey; the occupation of the imp Fashion would have been gone; nay, the angels, for fear of offending mortals, would have eschewed the nymph Iris, from whom the poets say they steal tints, and dipt their wings in a grey cloud before appearing in the presence of the douce daughters ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... Nat," he replied laughing, "when in dull, foggy old England, where there is so little sunshine, the pigeons and doves have beautiful iris-like reflections on their necks and breasts? Now for the thrush. There, Nat, that is a beauty. I should have felt that I had done a good day's work if I had only secured that dainty prize with its delicately harmonious coat of ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... a heron, flying Over waters cool, My thoughts of you are blue Iris! Today is the silent pool Which shining heron and Iris ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert

... type of albino would be as follows: The skin and hair are deprived of pigment; the eyebrows and eyelashes are of a brilliant white or are yellowish; the iris and the choroid are nearly or entirely deprived of coloring material, and in looking at the eye we see a roseate zone and the ordinary pink pupil; from absence of pigment they necessarily keep their eyes three-quarters closed, being photophobic to a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... until they came to the island that is called the Floating Island. There the Harpies sank down with wearied wings. Zetes and Calais were upon them now, and they would have cut them to pieces with their bright swords, if the messenger of Zeus, Iris, with the golden wings, had not ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... 16. Mascagni's opera "Iris" given at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, by a special ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... the spectacle did not see what was going on within, it is not astonishing that they believed it due to divine intervention. We know, in fact, that Osiris or Bacchus was considered as the discoverer of the vine and of milk; that Iris was the genius of the waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, moreover, sacrifices had to be made to the gods in order to obtain benefits, the flow of milk, wine, or water, as well as the hissing of the serpent, when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... third. Our Iris, whom mortals know as Trotting Nelly in her tartan cloak, will bring us the stranger's answer ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... something of everything in this rag bag: bits of stubble, fag ends of rushes, scraps of plants, fragments of some tiny twig or other, chips of wood, shreds of bark, largish grains, especially the seeds of the yellow iris, which were red when they fell from their capsules and are now black ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... was one of colorful change. The valley swam in thick, transparent haze, golden at dawn, warm and white at noon, purple in the twilight. At the end of every storm a rainbow curved down into the leaf-bright forest to shine and fade and leave lingeringly some faint essence of its rosy iris in ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... of heaven rest on aery pillars,— Come, and bring me wine; our days are wind. I declare myself the slave of that masculine soul Which ties and alliance on earth once for ever renounces. Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of heaven Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy? O high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch; This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest. Hearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven; I cannot divine what holds ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... firm in his hands. He knew precisely what adjustments to make. The iris of the human eye dilates and contracts with every shift of illumination, and the Time Observatory had an iris too. That iris could be opened without endangering his companions in the least—if he took care to widen it just ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long

... light and majesty to an assemblage of elements, which without them would be the most gloomy and horrible solitude in nature. Their eternal anthem, echoing from canon, mountain, rock and woodland, thrills you with delight, and you gaze with rapture at the iris-crowned curtains of fleecy foam as they plunge into gulfs enveloped in mist and spray. The stillness which held your senses spellbound, as you peered into the dismal depths of the canon below, is now broken by the uproar of waters; the terror it inspired is superseded by admiration and astonishment, ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... of the Greek want of violets is also very interesting to me, for it is one of my little pet discoveries that Homer means the blue iris by the word ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answered rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with precision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at that moment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected me was not so much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) the singular insignificance of their regard. A look more blankly stupid I have never ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that any one should be willing to discuss his hobby with him. His eyes by this time were apparently starting from their sockets, and I noticed that the pupils were dilated almost to the size of the iris. ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawford had brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to be frightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... been some fine scenery to hold her interest; far-off mountains of grim shapes, dark as iron, and spotted with snow as a leper is spotted with scales. Then had come low hills, following the mountains (nameless to her, because Maieddine had not cared to name them), and blue lakes of iris flowing over wide plains. But by and by the plains flattened to dullness; a hot wind ceaselessly flapped the canvas curtains, and Lella M'Barka sighed and moaned with the fatigue of constant motion. There was nothing but plain, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... thine! The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, So like the soul of me, what if 't were me? A melancholy better than all mirth. Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, Or at the foresight of obscurer years? Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty Superior to all its gaudy skirts. And, that no day of life may lack romance, The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down A private beam into each several heart. Daily the bending skies ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... as various as their sizes—bergs that in their gorgeous architecture and fairy magnificence, with fantastic peaks and airy pinnacles, which glittered now in the full light of day with all the varied colours of the rainbow, flashing out scintillations and radiances of violet and iris, purple and turquoise, and sapphire blue, emerald green and orange, blush rose and pink and red—all mingled with soft shades of crimson and carmine, and interspersed with gleams of gold and silver and a frosting over all of ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... and met the gray eyes. In the center of each iris was a dot of pupil so clearly defined and hard that they looked to Susan like the heads of black pins. "That's exactly what he'd say," she thought; "he's no better than a ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... colloquy of a few moments ago, Sara had been struck by the peculiar intensity of their regard—an odd depth and brilliance only occasionally to be met with, and then preferably in those eyes which are a somewhat light grey in colour and ringed round the outer edge of the iris with a deeper tint. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... warm as summer, and there were fragrances which seemed to wash over them in waves as they passed old gardens and old orchards. There was bridal-wreath billowing above stone fences, snow-balls, pale globes among the green, beds of iris, purple-black ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... milk-white grain, the broad acres undulating gracefully beneath the pressure of the passing breezes. The abundant wild flowers were vivid in color and fantastic in shape, nearly all unknown to us, save now and then an azalea, an iris, or some single-leaved representative ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... as interesting as their fruit trees. Each child appeared to have been trying a different experiment. Wilfred had made a pond in his by sinking an old wooden tub in the ground, and was trying to persuade a water-lily to grow in it. He had planted a clump of iris and some forget-me-nots at the edge, which hung over rather gracefully, and really looked quite pretty. He kept several frogs to swim about in the water, though the constant catching of these rather interfered with the wellbeing of the struggling lily. Alwyn had ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... not say so!" exclaimed the lady. "I always knew that would happen! Now tell me, don't you think this perfume of iris is delicate? It's in that little glass scent bottle; break the neck.[38] I shall use it in a minute. I have just had some bottles sent up from Capua. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... drops falling on the terrace. Vivian Bell, careful and refined, had placed on the table artistic stationery, sheets imitating the vellum of missals, others of pale violet powdered with silver dust; celluloid pens, white and light, which one had to manage like brushes; an iris ink which, on a page, spread a mist of azure and gold. Therese did not like such delicacy. It seemed to her not appropriate for letters which she wished to make simple and modest. When she saw that the name of "friend," given to Robert on the first line, placed on the silvery ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... become. But then how is this reconcilable with the case of the dice, and with similar examples?—that is the question.' 'I am often perplexed and amazed, Socrates, by these difficulties.' 'That is because you are a philosopher, for philosophy begins in wonder, and Iris is the child of Thaumas. Do you know the original principle on which the doctrine of Protagoras is based?' 'No.' 'Then I will tell you; but we must not let the uninitiated hear, and by the uninitiated I mean the obstinate people who believe in nothing which they cannot hold ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... earth-mother, may have clustered round the place, till the Phigalians were glad—for it was profitable as well as honourable—to believe that in their cavern Demeter sat mourning for the loss of Proserpine, whom Pluto had carried down to Hades, and all the earth was barren till Zeus sent the Fates, or Iris, to call her forth, and restore fertility to the world. And it may be true—the legend as Pausanias tells it 600 years after—that the old wooden idol having been burnt, and the worship of Demeter neglected till a famine ensued, the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... plume and nodding crest" of the swashbuckler Lamachus, of Philocleon, clinging to his ass's belly like Odysseus escaping under the ram from the Cyclops's cave; of the baby in the Thesmophoriazusae seized as a Euripidean hostage, and turning out a wine bottle in swaddling-clothes; of light-foot Iris in the role of a saucy, frightened soubrette; of the heaven-defying AEschylean Prometheus hiding under an umbrella from the thunderbolts of Zeus. And they must have felt instinctively what only a laborious erudition reveals to us, the sudden subtle ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... communicate with the sea by large or small rivers. The banks of the lakes and the slopes of the hills are covered with a luxuriant vegetation, rich in long grass and beautiful flowers, among them an iris cultivated in our gardens, the useful dark reddish-brown Sarana lily, several orchids, two species of rhododendron with large flowers, umbellifera as high as a man, sunflower-like synanthea, &c. Quite another nature prevailed on the island lying off the haven, regarding which Dr. Kjellman and ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... difficulty to be surmounted, there were spacious plains to be passed over, wherein the Paphlagonian horse,[85] the most numerous and bravest in Asia, would be found almost irresistible. There were also three or four great rivers, which the army would be unable to pass—the Thermodon and the Iris, each 300 feet in breadth—the Halys, nearly a quarter of a mile in breadth—the Parthenius, also very considerable. Such an array of obstacles (he affirmed) rendered the project of marching through Paphlagonia impracticable; whereas the voyage by sea from ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... GUNS.—Merange, Estafete, Gazelle, Hirondelle, Topaze, Beaucir, Euroquoise, Decidee, Jouvencelle, Tonguille, Amaranthe, Fauvette, Legere, Encelade, Etoile, Fine, Doris, Brestoise, Mouche, Bella Helene, Eugenie, Tafne, Parisienne, Gentille, Ibir, Mignonne, Souris, Egle, Iris, Papeiti, Sultan, Agathe, Touronnaise, ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... her pity; the blue Forget-me not, constancy; the Iris, pride; the Butter-cup, gold; the Passion-flower, love; the Amaranth, hope: all because the Spark should gift her with every one of these, and burn the gift in deeply. So they all dropped and died; and she could never know the flowers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... her eyes. "It's going t' look pretty near's it used to. Only I remember Mis' Bolton used to have a flower garden all along that stone wall over there; she was awful fond of flowers. I remember I gave her some roots of pinies and iris out of our yard, and she gave me a new kind of lilac bush—pink, it is, and sweet! My! you can smell it a mile off when it's ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... feared, or hated, or despised; And, mingling poison with our daily food, Yet asks the willing heart and smiling cheek: Yea! to our subtlest and most tyrannous foes, May we be driven for shelter, and in such May our sole refuge lie, when all the joys, That, iris-like, wantoned around our paths Of prosperous fortune, one by one have died; When day shuts in upon our hopes, and night Ushers blank darkness only. Therefore we Should pity thee, and have compassion on Thy helpless state, poor bird, whose loveliness Is yet unscathed, and whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... Basil and his sister Macrina (also in the C4) were of this type, may be seen from the rule of S. Basil. The communities, like those of Pachomius, were on opposite banks of a river—in this case, the Iris; and Macrina's nunnery is supposed to have been in the village of Annesi, near Neo-Caesarea, and founded 357 A.D. In her nunnery lived her mother and her younger brother Peter, who afterwards became ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... Flower, Taxonia, Wild Rose, Apple Blossom, Orange with Flowers, Virginia Creeper, Fish and Bulrushes, Winter Cherry, Corn Flower, Hops, Carnations, Cherry, Daisy Powdered, Primrose Powdered, Faust Motto, Iris Seed, Japanese, Jessamine, Lantern Plant, Periwinkle, Potato, Zynia, Tiger Lily, Geranium, Burrage, Corncockle, Hawthorn, Daffodil, Iris, Love-in-a-Mist, &c. &c., with many ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... misquote.—Of course it wasn't Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair,—but Iris. It was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian Here—Juno, in Latin—sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for this magazine misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse. "Waft us home the message" of course it ought to be. Will he be duly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... silence, watching the preparations for the combat, Helen, summoned by Iris, left her room in Priam's palace, where she was weaving among her maidens, and, robed and veiled in white, and shedding tears at the recollection of her former home and husband, went down to the Scaean gates, where sat Priam and the men too old for war. When ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... morning has been cutting out another dress for one of our women, who had heard of my tailoring prowess at the rice island. The material, as usual, was a miserable cotton, many-coloured like the scarf of Iris. While shaping it for my client, I ventured to suggest the idea of the possibility of a change of the nethermost as well as the uppermost garment. This, I imagine, is a conception that has never dawned ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... celebrated Swiss air "Ran des Vaches," in which there is great simplicity and sweetness, is from the pen of the Editor of the Sheffield Iris, author of the Wanderer ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... iris of the Bororo eye was brown, with considerable discoloration around its outer periphery, and especially in the upper part, where it was covered by the lid. The eyes were generally ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... been exhausted I had a rest, and some coffee, while Iris, a wicked little girl of eleven, told the story of Joan of Arc. Other girls followed her, each telling her own pet story. Their skill in this direction was a thing to marvel at. The audience was a joy, with half-raised heads, wide eyes, open mouths, every nerve of them ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... not the damned spite[311] of hateful Juno, Nor the great dangers of my labours kill me? Am I the mighty son of Jupiter, And shall this poison'd linen thus consume me? Shall I be burnt? Villains, fly up to heaven, Bid Iris muster up a troop of clouds, And shower down cataracts of rain to cool me; Or else I'll break her speckled bow in pieces. Will she not? no, she hates me like her mistress. Why then descend, you rogues, to the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... further end of this bland apartment, fragrant with the rare woods of the old inlaid panelling, the falling of aromatic oil from the ready-lighted lamps, the iris-root clinging to the dresses of the guests, as with odours from the [78] altars of the gods, the supper-table was spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the agreeable petit-maitre, who entertained. He was already most carefully dressed, but, like Martial's ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... leaves, that differ'd both in shape and show, Though all were green, yet difference such in green, Like to the checker'd bent of Iris' bow, Prided the running ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... plants of the natural order to which it belongs, are climbers.] allied to Stauntonia, of which two Himalayan kinds produce similar, but less agreeable edible fruits ("Kole-pot," Lepcha). At Laghep, iris was abundant, and a small bushy berberry (B. concinna) with oval eatable berries. The north wall of the house (which was in a very exposed spot) was quite bare, while the south was completely clothed with ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... absorbed. Most of this is saved, however, by putting the comparison in a metaphorical form, thus: "The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry." ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... on the summer air Hath shed its iris glory, And thrice the willows weeping there ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... sclerotic; the retina, an expansion of the optic nerve, lining in its turn the choroid; of the iris, a flat membrane, dividing the eye into two very unequally-sized chambers; of a lens termed the crystalline, suspended in the posterior chamber immediately behind the iris; and of two humours (also virtual lenses), whereof one, the aqueous, is enclosed in the anterior chamber formed by the iris and the cornea, while the other, the vitreous, fills the whole of the posterior chamber save what is occupied by the crystalline lens. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... the flash the floor of the plaisance appeared to be a great mirror that caught our reflections and distorted them fantastically and horribly. We saw then that it was a form of living mold, composed of millions of tiny plants, each with an eye-like iris at its center. Those eyes seemed to be watching us, and as we strode forward, a great sigh rose up, as if ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi

... The Iris is to the garden what the Orchid is to the greenhouse. Its colors are of the richest—blue, purple, violet, yellow, white, and gray. It blooms in great profusion, for weeks during the early part of summer. It is a magnificent flower. It will be found most effective when grouped, ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... in Lepidoptera, spots on the wings, bordered by a colored iris or ring, and usually with ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... firmament. Next came Virginia Harned. Daniel Frohman had seen her in a traveling company at the Fourteenth Street Theater and engaged her to support E. H. Sothern. She later came under Charles's control, and he presented her as star in "Alice of Old Vincennes," "Iris," and "The Light that ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... other symptoms of scrofula. 2. Chronic cutaneous affections, especially of the scalp. 3. Severe injuries of the bones of the head; convulsions. 4. Impaired vision, from whatever cause; inflammatory affections of the eyelids; immobility or irregularity of the iris; fistula, lachrymalis, etc., etc. 5. Deafness; copious discharge from the ears. 6. Loss of many teeth, or the teeth generally unsound. 7. Impediment of speech. 8. Want of due capacity of the chest, and any other indication of a liability to a pulmonic disease. 9. Impaired or inadequate ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... dove puts a livelier iris around his neck, and practises fantastic bows and amourous quicksteps along the verandah of the pigeon-house and on every convenient roof. The young male of the human species, less gifted in the matter of rainbows, ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... name?" asked the Stranger anxiously. "Won't that do? What about Iris ... Hyde?... You see, the truth is, I was never actually christened ... I was born a conscientious ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... pageant operas like "Le Prophete," "Lohengrin," and Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba." With the last it shares one element which brings it into relationship also with a number of much younger and less significant works—operas like Mascagni's "Iris," Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," and Giordano's "Siberia." In the score of "Aida" there is a slight infusion of that local color which is lavishly employed in decorating its externals. The pomp and pageantry of the drama are Egyptian and ancient; the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... this way, the general conversation is interrupted, and we all listen to him. Iris looks steadily in his face, and then he will turn as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes with his own melancholy gaze. I do believe that they have some kind of understanding together, that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and that there is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... exposed as they are to the spiritual influences which we give off every hour? They see the cavalcades of wealth, they gaze at the ingots of gold and the great white silver bars; they look with longing eyes at the silks with colours that come and go like the iris on the dove's neck. The luxuries of meat and drink appeal to them. The temptation to live for these things ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... she sat down with her feet in a cloud, and wept most bitterly. Soon she heard a fluttering in the air, and Iris glanced by and vanished in the cloud. Presently she returned, bringing with her a little girl whom Ida had often seen frolicking among the other children, a sunny-haired, rosy-cheeked child, named Hebe, the ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... gather upon his forehead, his wings and the folds of his robe[50] drip with wet; and, as with his broad hand he squeezes the hanging clouds, a crash arises, and thence showers are poured in torrents from the sky. Iris,[51] the messenger of Juno, clothed in various colors, collects the waters, and bears a supply ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... not have exceeded twenty-five, yet the countenance was that of one well versed in intrigue. The cast was Italian—the crisp black hair, swarthy complexion, and never-to-be-mistaken eyes. A large amount of Jesuit determination was expressed in his iris, blended with cunning, malignity, and fierceness. The features were prominent particularly the nose; the lips finely cut, but thin; the teeth beautiful and regular. In stature he was low, and habited in the dress of his order, a long black ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... of the sunset calmed my troubled spirit. All day the serene and beamy azure of the heavens had been plumed with snowy cloudlets of graceful and capricious form, which, as the sun sank to the horizon, were tinged with fleeting glows resembling the iris of a dove's neck, or the hues of a dying dolphin. The great luminary himself was lost in a golden glamour, and a single bright star shone palely through a rosy mist, which covered all the southern sky, like a diamond seen through ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... on the kitchen staff. Nay: as cook at times fish could not be allowed to spoil, and fell to the perquisites of Densuke. Thus time passed; and with it the delivery of O'Mino, and the crisis in the affairs of Densuke approached. Now Geishu[u] Sama[7] was a fourth month daimyo[u]. Hence with the iris blossoms he took his departure from Edo to the government of his fief in Aki province. The Sakuji Machibugyo[u], one Takahashi Daihachiro[u], plead illness on this occasion of the exodus. As unable to accompany his lord he remained in Edo. On plea of convenience he established ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... brush, and duster, in the centre, point to future domestic vexations, but the large spray of iris beside it promises a pleasure which will ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... sensation and not from any properties of heat. When a person goes from clear day-light into an obscure room for a while it appears gloomy, which gloom however in a little time ceases, and the deficiency of light becomes no longer perceived. This is not solely owing to the enlargement of the iris of the eye, since that is performed in an instant, but to this law of sensation, that when a less stimulus is applied (within certain bounds) the sensibility increases. Thus at going into a bath as much colder than the body as that of Buxton, the diminution of heat on the skin ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... blossom wave plumes of Mediterranean heath and sweet-scented yellow coronilla. Under the stems of the ilex peep cyclamens, pink and sweet; the hedgerows are a tangle of vetches, convolvuluses, lupines, orchises, and alliums, with here and there a purple iris. It would be difficult to describe all the rare and lovely plants which are found here in a profusion that surpasses even the flower-gardens of the Cornice, and reminds one of the most favoured Alpine ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... paints his breast, Ere the daffodil is drest, Ere the iris' lovely head Waves above her perfumed bed Comes the crocus—and the Spring Follows ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... "Hither (she cried, her melting tone I hear "It vibrates full on fancy's raptur'd ear) 240 "Ye gentle spirits whom my soul refines, "Where all its animating lustre shines; "Ye who can exquisitely feel the glow "Whose soft suffusion gilds the cloud of woe; "Warm as the colours varying iris pours 245 "That tinge with streaming rays the chilling showers; "Ye to whose yielding hearts my power endears "The transport blended with delicious tears, "The bliss that swells to agony the breast, "The sympathy that robs the soul of rest; 250 "Hither ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... somnambulist, emigrant, fugitive, refugee; beach comber, booly[obs3]; globegirdler[obs3], globetrotter; vagrant, hobo [U.S.], night walker, sleep walker; noctambulist, runabout, straphanger, swagman, swagsman [obs3][Aust.]; trecker[obs3], trekker, zingano[obs3], zingaro[obs3]. runner, courier; Mercury, Iris, Ariel[obs3], comet. pedestrian, walker, foot passenger; cyclist; wheelman. rider,horseman, equestrian, cavalier, jockey, roughrider, trainer, breaker. driver, coachman, whip, Jehu, charioteer, postilion, postboy[obs3], carter, wagoner, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... to sketch was only a small girl in a gay kimono and a big red umbrella, but the tiny mite made a vivid spot of color as she stood motionless to watch a great brown moth hovering over a bed of iris. Before I could explain that the child was a waif temporarily housed with me, shy and easily frightened, Zura whipped from somewhere out of the mysteries of a tight dress a pad and pencil and, with something like magic, the lines of the little maid's figure and face were ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... of the retina and which is commonly supposed to be seen only with the ophthalmoscope. Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends and acquaintances that there are instances of persons in which the iris when directly in front of the observer with the light behind him, always looks crimson, and in several of these cases the persons exhibiting this colour, or danger signal, as it may be called, were subject to brain trouble. It is curious ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... kept his countenance, but his diaphragm was shaking the change in iris waistcoat-pockets with subterranean laughter. He had looked through his spectacles and seen at once what had happened. The Deacon, not being in the habit of taking his nourishment in the congealed state, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... tail at the other. The lobster can regrow a complete gill and any number of claws or an eye. A salamander will reproduce a foot and part of a limb. Take out the crystalline lens in the eye of a salamander and the edge of the iris, or colored part of the eye, will grow another lens. Take out both the lens and the iris and the choroid coat of the eye ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... Paphos and Cythera famed Depict, I pray, the absent Iris' face. Thou hast not seen the lovely nymph I've named; The better for thy peace.—Then will I trace For thy instruction her transcendent grace. Begin with lily white and blushing rose, Take then the Loves and Graces... But what good Words, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... tumors, Eagle accepted him as her equal. His fine wavy hair was of a chestnut color, and his hands and feet were small. His features were perfect as her own. But while life played unceasingly in vivid expression across her face, his muscles never moved. The hazel eyes, bluish around their iris rims, took cognizance of nothing. His left eyebrow had been parted by a cut now healed and forming ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... described by Nuttall, is variegated with black, bright bay, and ochreous. Tail, wedged, the feathers pointed, the four outer nearly all white; sides, thighs, and vent, pale ochreous, spotted with black; upper mandible brown, the lower bluish-white; iris, hazel; legs and feet, large, pale flesh-colour. In the young bird the color is much fainter than ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... weaver! weave the flowers of Feraghan Into the fabric that thy birth began; Iris, narcissus, tulips cloud-band tied, These thou shalt picture for the eye of Man; Henna, Herati, and the Jhelums tide In Sarraband and Saruk be thy guide, And the red dye of Ispahan beside The checkered Chinese fret of ancient gold; —So heed the ban, old as the law is old, Nor weave ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... Kobuk's resting place a bed of transplanted violets and iris and dog-tooth lilies. When the work was finished, Lollie stood leaning on the club he had begun to carry, as his one desire in life at this period was to emulate Robinson Crusoe. He looked thoughtfully down at the grave ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... to hear," said the Mohawk, "if you would see how peace grows out of deeds of blood, as the blue iris grows from the blackness of the swamp; but it is the flower that the sun loves, not the roots, buried in the darkness, from which the blossom springs. So we of the red race say that the sun shines on peace alone, not the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... The iris of the eyes is blood red, as in Albinos, while the pupil is dark. The eyeball itself is very white, as are the teeth. These latter add a most ferocious appearance to an otherwise fearsome and terrible countenance, as the lower ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and pressed her closely to him. She threw her head back upon his shoulder and lifted her face to him. He looked down on her, and the frown passed from his brow as he surveyed her flushed cheeks, her red full lips parted in breathless eagerness; her dark eyes were wide open, the iris flecked with golden sparks and the white as clear and blue-tinged as in the eyes of a vigorous infant; her head lay on his shoulder in perfect content, and she put up her mouth to him as simply and as sure of a response as a pretty child. He was entirely aware of the ridiculousness of his position, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... independent of exterior aid. In fact, she was not unlike some tall and stately blossom, or so Stretton thought, no exotic flower, but something as strong and hardy as it was at the same time delicately beautiful. Her eyes had the colouring that one sees in the iris-lily sometimes—a tint which is almost grey, but merges into purple; eyes, as the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... of complexion which, though not common even in Italy, is only to be found in the daughters of that land, and which harmonised well with the purple lustre of her hair, and the full, clear iris of the dark eyes. Never were parted cherries brighter than her dewy lips; and the colour of the open neck and the rounded arms was of a whiteness still more dazzling, from the darkness of the hair and the carnation of the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... caught sight of the lay figure where it had not been before, looked at the couch, and saw the pall yet heaved up from beneath, opened her eyes till the entire white sweep around the iris suggested a new expression of consternation to Teufelsbuerst, though from a quarter whence he did not desire or look for it; and then, without a word, sat down to a drawing she had been busy upon ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... than we at first supposed. I think, since the arrival of the three transports which had been separated in a storm, they may be considered as about two thousand strong. Their naval force, according to the best intelligence, is the Charon, of forty-four guns, Commodore Symmonds, the Amphitrite, Iris, Thames, and Charlestown frigates, the Forvey, of twenty guns, two sloops of war, a privateer ship, and two brigs. We have about thirty-seven hundred militia embodied, but at present they are divided into three ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... conventional forms, and there is a certain sameness in his heads with their large oval countenances; the small eyes, outlined round the upper arch of the eyebrow, and with a black spot for pupils, sometimes lack expression, or have a too monotonous one, and the iris is often lost in the white of the cornea; his mouths are always drawn small with a thickening of the lips in the centre, and the corners strongly accentuated; the colour of his faces is either too pink or too yellow; the ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... into his old mood; but he was more still and something sad all the rest of the morning. Well, when we'd gotten about enough, and they were dying in the boat there, as they cast their scales, like the iris, we put in-shore; and building a fire, we cooked our own dinner and boiled our own coffee. Many's the icy winter-night I've wrapped up Dan's bottle of hot coffee in rolls on rolls of flannel, that he might drink it hot and strong far out at sea in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... less vigorous originality and less exclusive individuality of the Trio, which, although superior in these respects to the Sonata, Op. 4, does not equal the composer's works written in simpler forms. Even the most hostile of Chopin's critics, Rellstab, the editor of the Berlin musical journal Iris, admits—after censuring the composer's excessive striving after originality, and the unnecessarily difficult pianoforte passages with their progressions of intervals alike repellent to hand and ear—that this is "on the whole a praiseworthy work, which, in spite of some excursions into ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... ocular orb, on which the orb depends, which is situated to the front of the black iris and has the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... made to work in "tandem." In less technical terms, the Educator was strictly an individual device, a one-man-dog. The wave forms that could be recorded were as individual as fingerprints and pore-patterns and iris markings. James could record a series of ideas or a few pages of information and play them back to himself. During the playback he could think in no other terms; he could not even correct, edit or improve ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... now an apprentice on board a man-of-war, left the harbor of Rochefort. Leaning over the bulwarks of the corvette Iris, he watched the coast of France receding swiftly till it became indistinguishable from the faint blue horizon line. In a little while he felt that he was really alone, and lost in the wide ocean, lost and alone in the world and ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac

... given me "Cloud-cuckoo-city" to guard Between mankind and the sky, Tho' the dew might shine on an April sward, Iris had ne'er passed by! Swift as her beautiful wings might be From the rosy Olympian hill, Had Epops entrusted the gates to me Earth were his kingdom still. For I am the hawk, the archer, the hawk! Who knoweth my pitiless breast? Who watcheth me sway in ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... he, "one of our allies; who can it be that comes so late?" He touched the figure of Iris with his staff, and the Caesar Nicephorus Briennius entered in the full Grecian habit, and that graceful dress anxiously arranged to the best advantage. "Let me hope, my Lord," said Agelastes, receiving ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... violets, five ounces. Essence of acacia, one ounce. Essence of rose, one ounce. Extract of iris root, one ounce. Oil ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... the infant is born with the capacity to respond to stimuli both from without and within. Touch the lips of the new-born child with the nipple or even the finger, and immediately the sucking instinct takes place; let a bright light shine into the open eye, and the iris at once contracts; plunge the little one into cold water or let it be subject to any bodily discomfort and at once the crying reflex takes place. The simple, direct responses to stimuli such as sneezing, ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall



Words linked to "Iris" :   Iris foetidissima, iris family, Spanish iris, Iris kochii, Iris florentina, gladdon iris, Iris tingitana, vernal iris, membrane, sword lily, stinking iris, Dalmatian iris, eye, Iris xiphium, diaphragm, dwarf iris, beardless iris, pupil, yellow iris, Iris cristata, Iris xiphioides, roast beef plant, Dutch iris, Japanese iris, Iris germanica, iridaceous plant, yellow flag, Iris kaempferi, Apatura iris, southern blue flag, xiphium iris, Iris germanica florentina, gladdon, Iris Murdoch, Dame Jean Iris Murdoch, blue flag, Florentine iris, stinking gladwyn, German iris, optic, iris scanning, stop, bulbous iris



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