Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Vermilion   /vərmˈɪljən/   Listen
Vermilion

adjective
1.
Of a vivid red to reddish-orange color.  Synonyms: Chinese-red, cinnabar, vermillion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Vermilion" Quotes from Famous Books



... young man smiled, whether in resignation or contempt, it was difficult to tell. "Look," said he, "I have in that Japanese vase two roses gathered yesterday evening in the bud from the governor's garden; this morning they have blown and spread their vermilion chalices beneath my gaze; with every opening petal they unfold the treasures of their perfume, filling my chamber with a fragrance that embalms it. Look now on these two roses; even among roses these are beautiful, and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... poorest parents are so proud to clothe their offspring. They love colour; and ribbons of many hues are lavished on the frocks and tunics. One of my London moments was when I first saw, in Whitechapel High Street, a little Jewess, with masses of jet-black hair, dressed in vermilion and white. I wonder, by the way, why it is that the children of the genteel quarters of London, such as Kensington Gardens, have no hair, or at any rate, only skimpy little twigs of it, while the children of the East are loaded with curls and tresses of an ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... Marking Ink.—Dr. Elsner gives the following as a stamping ink for goods before undergoing bleaching, or treating with acids or alkalis. It consists merely of one ounce of fine Chinese vermilion and one drachm of protosulphate of iron, well triturated with boiled oil varnish." * * * ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... of vermilion and cinnabar, which marks the Imperial diplomas from Leo I. (A.D. 470) to the fall of the Greek empire, (Bibliotheque Raisonnee de la Diplomatique, tom. i. p. 504—515 Lami, de Eruditione Apostolorum, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... refuse it, without all the vermilion of my Red Sea mounting to their cheeks, and covering them with the blush of shame?" ejaculated the artist, as he gazed on his picture. "When I think that there is five hundred francs' worth of color there, and at least a million of genius, without counting my lovely youth, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... vicissitudes of fortune passed through by this official have been previously referred to, and his restoration to power was a practical proof of the new ruler's good resolutions, and meant more than all the virtuous platitudes expressed in vermilion edicts. Sung had gained a popularity that far exceeded that of the emperor, through the lavish way in which he distributed his wealth, consistently refusing to accumulate money for the benefit of himself or his family. But his independent spirit rendered him an unpleasant ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... 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

... central group of trees—Saman, {81c} Sandbox, {81d} and Fig, with the bright ostrich plumes of a climbing palm towering through the mimosa-like foliage of the Saman; and Erythrinas {81e} (Bois immortelles, as they call them here), their all but leafless boughs now blazing against the blue sky with vermilion flowers, trees of red coral sixty feet in height. Ah that we could show you the avenue on the right, composed of palms from every quarter of the Tropics—palms with smooth stems, or with prickly ones, with ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... into which they are rushing headlong; and he speaks God's message boldly. From the poor idol-ridden labourer, offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven to coax her into sending him a good harvest, to the tyrant king who had built his palace of cedar and painted it with vermilion, he had a bitter word for every man. The lying priest tried to silence him; and Jeremiah answered him, that his wife should be a harlot in the city, and his children sold for slaves. The king tried to flatter him into being quiet; and he told him in return, that he should be buried ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... common expression amongst them, and they prove their divinity-ship by eating live coals, and by various tricks of a similar nature. A medicine bag is an indispensable part of a hunter's equipment. It is generally furnished with a little bit of indigo, blue vitriol, vermilion, or some other showy article; and is, when in the hands of a noted conjurer, such an object of terror to the rest of the tribe, that its possessor is enabled to fatten at his ease upon the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... son had been adopted in baptism by the emperor, the establishment of his daughter should be the peculiar care of the empress of Constantinople. On the return of Phranza, the treaty was ratified by the Greek monarch, who with his own hand impressed three vermilion crosses on the golden bull, and assured the Georgian envoy that in the spring his galleys should conduct the bride to her Imperial palace. But Constantine embraced his faithful servant, not with the cold approbation of a sovereign, but with the warm ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... enough to enchant us, with their abundant plenteousness of good things. The fruit-market was beautiful; fruit-baskets half as high as I am, placed in rows of a dozen, filled with peaches, and painted of a bright vermilion color, which throws a ruddy becoming tint over the downy fruit. It looked like something in the "Arabian Nights;" heaps, literally heaps of melons, apples, pears, and wild grapes, in the greatest profusion. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... a moment looking at the entrance, and surveying the huge plaster dragons with their gaping mouths and vermilion-red tongues. They were ranged up a green slope, two on either side of the brown fretted roof that covered the steep tunnel that led up a flight of more than a hundred steps to the flat plateau, where the golden spire towered high over all, amid a ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... 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 aloft,—stern ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eager for such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them. But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is of a vastly different mettle. She is a woman; not a doll. She is flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, and vermilion. She has a heart and a will; not a spirit corrupted by vanity ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... failing! Up he vaulteth, Fresh as when he first began; All in coat of bright vermilion, 'Quipped as Shaw, the Lifeguardsman; Right and left his whizzing broadsword, Like a sturdy flail, he throws; Cutting out a path unto ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... a beautiful land, shaded by grand old forests; also fertile fields, waving with corn and a broad-leaved plant with purple flowers, which the Indians smoked in pipes of flint and vermilion stone brought from the cliffs of the great ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... 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 the final plan ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... 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, upturned hats, a peacock ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... 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 rise up, joyful though weeping, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... fine old pyramid pear-tree not far from the green walk, and while hoeing away at the weeds that morning, where the rich soil made them disposed to grow rampant, old Tummus came upon "the very moral" of the pear his old woman would like. It was big, mellow, and streaked with vermilion and patched with gold; and had evidently lain there two nights, for its fragrant odour had attracted a slug, which had carved a couple of round cells in the side, close to where the round black hole betrayed where the maggot lived, and sundry other marks showed that it was still ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... lead, made by the wet or vinegar process. The second class being neutrals have no chemical affinity to linseed oil; they need a large quantity of drier to harden the paint, and include all blacks, vermilion, Prussian, Paris, and Chinese blue, also terra di Sienna, Vandyke brown, Paris green, verdigris, ultramarine, genuine carmine, and madderlake. The last seven are, on account of their transparency, better adapted for varnish mixtures—glazing. The third class of pigments ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... to the young people. When he spoke next it was to say, "Well, here we are!" and he turned from the highway and drove up in front of a brown cottage with a vermilion roof, and a group of geraniums clutching the rock that cropped up in the loop formed by the road. It was treeless and bare all round, and the ocean, unnecessarily vast, weltered away a little more than a stone's-cast from the cottage. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... forest before the fires had 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 ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... same time a dish of picante was served. It was composed of dried meat and some pounded roots, highly seasoned with cayenne pepper, and coloured with grains of the achote, which gave it a brilliant vermilion tint. After the meat, a sort of pudding was brought in, consisting of a great variety of fruits stewed in water,—a dish I cannot praise; and then followed a dessert of delicious fresh fruits and sweet cakes, which were washed down by a tumbler of fresh water. Such ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... smiled, whether in resignation or contempt, it was difficult to tell. "Look," said he, "I have in that Japanese vase two roses gathered yesterday evening in the bud from the governor's garden; this morning they have blown and spread their vermilion chalice beneath my gaze; with every opening petal they unfold the treasures of their perfumes, filling my chamber with a fragrance that embalms it. Look now on these two roses; even among roses these are beautiful, and the rose is the most beautiful of flowers. Why, then, do you bid ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... introduced By some low dirge. And let us see them die— Slow-dying mullets within crystal bowls, Dying from colour unto colour: now Vermilion death-pangs fading into blue— A scarlet agony in azure ending. There we have colour! And at last the tongues Of nightingales—the tongues of nightingales? O, silence with the ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... hung thick underneath, and tore off handful after 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 under a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... 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, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... 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

... door always of the wrong colour, and the windows of the wrong size, and where, even when wearied of the houses you turn to contemplate the street itself, you have nothing to look at but chimney-pot hats, men with sandwich boards, vermilion letterboxes, and do that even at the risk of being run over by ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... setting sun. Some inquiring spirits will be moved to ask you what you think of this country, and, if you visit the World's Fair some adventurous person may ask your opinion of Chicago. It is needless to say that a favorable opinion cannot be too highly colored, and if tinted with vermilion, will conduce to the pleasure of your stay. [Laughter.] You will have little opportunity to admire the wonders of our natural scenery save at Niagara. You will be able to appreciate the reply of an American Naval officer to an English friend in Italy when each had been ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... starlings, quails, cocks, and partridges; water-vessels of different sorts and of elegant forms, machines for throwing water about, guitars, stands for putting images upon, stools, lac, red arsenic, yellow ointment, vermilion and collyrium, as well as sandal-wood, saffron, betel nut and betel leaves. Such things should be given at different times whenever he gets a good opportunity of meeting her, and some of them should be given in private, and ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... chrome yellow,[7] and Indian ink;[8] but also the coarser colours used by the common house-painter are more or less adulterated. Thus, of the latter kind, white lead[9] is mixed with carbonate or sulphate of barytes; vermilion[10] with red lead. ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... the 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 ...
— 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.

... with any portion 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 the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... ray of scarlet light from the sinking sun just then came winging through the dispersing storm-clouds and caused all the white snow-world to redden, and dyed the frost-flowers on the window-pane, and, entering where the pane was bare, lit all the room with soft vermilion light. So, in the wondrous blush of the white world, the girl's cheeks glowed and yet ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... 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 ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... fields of grain and "afalfa,"—a cereal quite new to them, with broad, very 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 grateful after the ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... and the vermilion cheeks Of beautiful Aurora, where I was, By too great age were changing ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... stood there, and counted the sacks as they were drawn up, the red moon rose again before him. This time it was painted on a sack. In the place where the other sacks bore a wheel of five spokes, here above the trade-mark a crescent was painted in vermilion. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... uterine vellum and much fine gold and what colours he asked for the work. Then Brother Ambrose limned a wondrous fair city of gold with turrets and spires; and he inlaid blue for the sapphire, and green for the emerald, and vermilion where the city seemed aflame with the glory of God; but the angels he could not limn, nor could he set the rest of the colours as he saw them, nor the wall of stars on either hand; and Brother Ambrose fell sick because ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... Aholah and Aholibah, who had been in Egypt and had adopted unmoral ways of life Ezekiel tells that when Aholibah "doted upon the Assyrians" she "saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins".[387] Traces of the red colour on the walls of Assyrian temples and palaces have been observed by excavators. The winged gods "like burning coals" ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... question more which I must for a moment touch upon, in conclusion, namely, the mystery of clearness itself. In an Italian twilight, when, sixty or eighty miles away, the ridge of the Western Alps rises in its dark and serrated blue against the crystalline vermilion, there is still unsearchableness, but an unsearchableness without cloud or concealment,—an infinite unknown, but no sense of any veil or interference between us and it: we are separated from it not by any anger or storm, not by any vain and fading vapor, but only ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... rose 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, And on the ...
— Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost • Gregory Thornton

... nymph. I was only twenty-two—a most impressionable age. Her hair was like that rare October brown, half dun, half gold; her eyes were cool and restful, like the brown pools one sees in the heart of the forests, and her lips and cheeks cozened the warm vermilion of the rose which lay ever so lightly on the bosom of her white dress. Close at hand was a table upon which stood a pitcher of lemonade. She was holding in her hand an empty glass. As my eyes encountered her calm, inquiring gaze, my courage fled precipitately, likewise the object of my errand. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... should have sprung from the rarest of mortals. He saw that her hair, blacker than the night, rippled in a glorious cascade below her waist, and that her teeth embellished with the whiteness of alabaster the vermilion lips which ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... crumpled invoices, counting and checking and reporting to other men in narrow glass offices against the wall. Outside stood the great wagons laden with the white deal boxes bound with iron hoops and bearing in vermilion letters the inscription of ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... native industry took the place of the imported article. Among prohibited gowns in Florence was one owned by Donna Francesca degli Albizi, "a black mantle of raised cloth: the ground is yellow, and over it are woven birds, parrots, butterflies, red and white roses, and many figures in vermilion and green, with pavilions and dragons, and yellow and black letters and trees, and many other figures of various colours, the whole lined with cloth in hues of black and vermilion." As one reads this description, it seems as though the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... Monny wanted to live for a few days in a hotel close to the Nile; and we were all pleased with the plan, for this was once a palace of Khedive Ismael, and his furniture's still in it, the wildest mixture of Orientalized French taste. There's a garden, with paths of vermilion sand brought from somewhere in the desert. But the most convulsive things live along the Nile Valley and spend their nights braying, hooting, cooing, whining, bellowing, and barking. If only the donkeys and dogs and birds and a few other sacred animals of Egypt would be a ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... deep red brown, and in some places almost purple. The perpendicular surfaces were patched with close lying grey-green moss, and in places with a variety almost the colour of vermilion. The country was not burned over, and everywhere the beautiful reindeer moss grew luxuriantly, setting off in fine contrast the tall spruces, with occasional ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of comment. Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple rites of the Free American Reformed Episcopalian Church, they found it a bright emerald-green. These kaleidoscopic changes naturally amused the party very much, and bets on the ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... actually found upon the bas-reliefs are four only—red, blue, black, and white. The red is a good bright tint, far exceeding in brilliancy that of Egypt. On the sculptures of Khorsabad it approaches to vermilion, while on those of Nimrud it inclines to a crimson or a lake tint. It is found alternating with the natural stone on the royal parasol and mitre; with blue on the crests of helmets, the trappings of horses, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... or, as we now call it, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far above the present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its head waters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in time enter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California. ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... villain; he shall hang in chains Upon the ruins of this conquer'd town.— Sirrah, the view of our vermilion tents (Which threaten'd more than if the region Next underneath the element of fire Were full of comets and of blazing stars, Whose flaming trains should reach down to the earth) Could not affright you; no, nor I myself, The wrathful ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... Islands vermilion, We've pearled on half-shares in the Bay, We've shouted on seven-ounce nuggets, We've starved on a Seedeeboy's pay; We've laughed at the world as we found it — Its women and cities and men — From Sayyid Burgash in a tantrum To the smoke-reddened ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... griefe whiche she concerned, to see the vnshamefast hardinesse of the varlette, as she could not tell how to make him aunswere: but in the ende breaking silence, and fetching a great sighe from the bottome of her harte, her face stayned with a freshe Vermilion rudde, which beautified her colour, by reason of disdaine conceiued against this impudent Orator, she aunswered him verie seuerely. "O God, who would haue thought, that from a hart nobly brought vp, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... the sweet, vermilion strawberries Deep in the grasses for thy roving fingers, And garlands leaflets for thy forehead's ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... civilization and Christianity. But the Frenchmen were won over to the Indians, and adopted Indian ways of life. They lived in wigwams, wore Indian dress, decorated their long hair with eagle feathers, and made their faces hideous with vermilion, ocher, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... save for the beaded clout, and painted scarlet from brow to ankle, beat the witch-drums tump-a-tump! tump-a-tump! while a fourth stood, erect as a vermilion statue, holding a chain ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... many various greys, some warmed with vermilion, some with umber, and many more that are mere mixtures of black and white, large quantities of white, for Chavannes paints in a high key, wishing to disturb the colour of the surrounding stone as little as may be. Grey ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... had been damaged and roughened by wind and rain, by long tramps, and by glaring sunshine. Yet she was superlatively handsome with her warm and swarthy skin, under which the scarlet blood circled freely. To an oval face, a slightly hooked nose and two vermilion lips, rather full, she added the glossy black eyes of the true Romany, peaked at the corners. Her jetty hair descended smoothly from under a red handkerchief down to her shoulders, and there, at the tips, became tangled and curling. Her figure was magnificent, and she swayed and swung from ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... in things that are incorporeal, is impossible and not so much as to be imagined. But yet this they would constrain us to conceive. For if a sphere touch a plane by a point, it is manifest that it may be also drawn over the plane upon a point; and if the superficies of it is painted with vermilion, it will imprint a red line on the plane; and if it is fiery hot, it will burn the plane. Now for an incorporeal thing to color, or a body to be burned by that which is incorporeal, is against sense. But if we should imagine an earthen or glassy sphere to fall from ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... half enveloped in dust, showed a few shades darker than the desert itself. A patch of vermilion indicated the Pioneer band, now blaring forth, with placid unconcern, "The Girl I Left Behind Me!" Lesser specks denoted officers, riding out, like the rest of the station, to speed the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... woman appeared before them in a black turban and a voluminous black cloak. Her flat, vermilion lips were parted in a social smile; but her Tartar eyes remained inscrutable. Her face, wedge-shaped, dead white, with its look of being made from some material more rigid than flesh, was as startling as the countenance of an Oriental image, in its ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... 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 nice, why bring it on." Meanwhile ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... clown, white and vermilion of face, clad in the traditional white, black, and scarlet motley of his tribe, had leaped cat-like upon the window sill and swept the room with his painted grin. In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... with just half a magnificent beard and moustache. It was he who introduced hair-dyeing 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 bitter words: ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... in their trim beds, with their likeness in crimson bars of morning above them, and its dew glittering heavy, globed in their glossy cups, may be loved better than the gray nettles of the ash heap, under gray sky, unveined by vermilion or ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... was staying with friends at Bath, so I went for a walk on Lansdown. In choosing our tokens we had regard to the arrangements of the postal union; he sent me a few dried leaves of basil and an elaborate drawing of an emerald-green plant in a gamboge pot tied round with a vermilion ribbon as a sign of goodwill and friendship. He drew the design out of his own imagination and coloured it with paints which we had bought together in Naples. I might have sent him a volume of Keats containing a Pot of Basil in an equally transmissible form, but as he does not read English ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

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

... had gone up the hatchway to see about getting on board his ammunition, the vermilion-painted powder hoys I had observed in the distance at the mouth of the harbour being now nearly alongside the ship; and, all of a sudden, as my reckless shipmates were pulling me almost to pieces between them in their mad prank, there ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... without regard to nice considerations of truth. Much as we may admire his intellectual badinage under other circumstances, it may be questioned whether in this supreme tragedy of the world it was fitting for Shaw to daub himself anew with his familiar vermilion and play the ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... triumphal car are either three or four prosperous-looking Chinamen, clothed in many-coloured silks, or a posse of gaily-dressed celestial beauties, who, with faces painted white, lips dyed vermilion, hair caked with oil, garlanded with flowers, laden with jewels, displaying their tiny satin shoes and toying with fans in their small and beautiful hands, furnish a tout-ensemble sufficiently original ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... 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 ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... you. Unless I tell you of our remarkable snow season, snow upon snow, till it is one or two feet deep; or of the woodpeckers that come and hammer upon our trees as if they were driving a trade; or of our sunsets, which flood the south mountain with splendor, and flush the sky above with purple and vermilion, as if they said, "We are coming, we are coming to bring light and warmth and beauty with us." You can hardly understand, in your city confines, how lovely are these harbingers of spring. And see! it is only two months ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... the nutmeg plantations had already brought out their mace to dry, and the baskets lay in vermilion patches on the sun-smitten green, like gouts of arterial blood. White vapors round the mountain peaks rose tortuously toward the blue; while seaward, rain still filled the air as with black sand drifting down aslant, through gaps in which we could descry far off a steel-bright strip ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... maple. On all of these the sunlight plays and makes a wondrous color symphony. "Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." To be sure, this colorful arrangement of the stems and twigs is not brilliant, like the flaming vermilion blossoms of the Lobelia cardinalis in August, the orange yellow of the rudbeckias in September, or the wondrous blue of the fringed gentian in early October. It is more like the delicate tints and shadings of an arts and crafts exhibition, stained leather, hammered copper and brass, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... my heart builds upon: then will I bring her to confessions of grateful love: and then will I kiss her when I please; and not stand trembling, as now, like a hungry hound, who sees a delicious morsel within his reach, (the froth hanging upon his vermilion jaws,) yet dares not leap at ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... streets, were uttered by the Prince; and after repeating them again and again, and wailing bitterly, full of sorrow and woe, never shutting an eye to sleep, nor opening his mouth to eat, he gave such way to grief, that his face, which was before of oriental vermilion, became of gold paint, and the ham of his lips became ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... was cold with hard frost. Early the next morning I sent the men to cover the body of our departed companion Beauparlant with the trunks and branches of trees which they did and, shortly after their return, I opened his bundle and found it contained two papers of vermilion, several strings of beads, some fire-steels, flints, awls, fish-hooks, rings, linen, and the glass of an artificial horizon. My two men began to recover a little as well as myself, though I was by ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... six-footer 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 ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... thought of Katiousha, her appearance at that moment obscured every other recollection of her. The dark, smooth, resplendent head; the white dress with folds clinging to her graceful bust and undulating breast; those vermilion cheeks, those brilliant black eyes, and two main traits in all her being: the virgin purity of her love, not only for himself, but for everything and everybody—he knew it—not only the good and beautiful, but even that beggar ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... mother-in-law (for she may be called so) exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder towards sunset, so, in the decline of her years, the cheeks of my lady dowager blushed more deeply. Her face was illuminated with vermilion, which appeared the brighter from the white paint employed to set it off. She wore the ringlets which had been in fashion in King Charles's time; whereas the ladies of King William's had head-dresses like ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... raised, commanded a view of a small pond, which reflected at intervals the green shade of tamarind trees. In the calm, limpid waters, many fish were visible, some with silver scales and purple fins, others gleaming with azure and vermilion; so still were they that they looked as if set in a mass of bluish crystal, and, as they dwelt motionless near the surface of the pool, on which played a dazzling ray of the sun, they revelled in the enjoyment of the light and heat. A thousand ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... and they passed on to the cricket field, where the second eleven were playing a neighbouring engineering school. It was a glorious day. The sun had never seemed to Mike so bright or the grass so green. It was one of those days when the ball looks like a large vermilion-coloured football as it leaves the bowler's hand. If ever there was a day when it seemed to Mike that a century would have been a certainty, it was this Saturday. A sudden, bitter realisation of all he had given up swept over him, but he choked the feeling down. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... Alfred was nervous, delicate, slightly epileptic, and it is certain that he was given to dissipation, which so far had affected his health only by making him hysterical. He was an exceedingly handsome youth, with exquisite manners, "dreamy rather than dazzling eyes, dilated nostrils, and vermilion lips half opened." Such was he when George Sand, then seven years his senior, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... melting little lady with the vermilion mouth and the cooing eyes who manicures in a Rialto hotel barber shop. She is the one whose touch is like the cool caress of a snowflake, whose face is as void of guile as the face of the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... for him to wear a patch or two of paint now, and Na-tee-kah helped him to put it on. If he had been a white boy with his first standing-collar, he could not have been more particular, and every other boy in camp had something to say to the others about the fit of that vermilion. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... Waldstricker," she replied, 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 ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... is the key of Heaven and Hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer; whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven. At the day of Judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim ... God loveth not the Transgressors; kill ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... have a straight leg and a well-shaped foot; my hair is light, and of a beautiful auburn; my face is long, its contour is handsome, nose large and aquiline; mouth neither large nor small, but chiselled, and with a very pleasing expression; lips vermilion; teeth not fine, but not frightful either. My eyes are blue, neither large nor small, but sparkling, soft, and proud, like my mien. I talk a great deal, without saying silly things or using bad words. I am a very vicious enemy, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... 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 color, and yet so persistent in their effect upon the eye and the feelings. Looking at them, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... flickered the brilliant woodpeckers—they of the solid crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young woodlands, of limpid streams clattering ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... had ever seen, and though the dress was of the ordinary dark serge with a coloured apron, it was put on with an air that made it look like some strange and beautiful costume on the slender, lithe, little form. The vermilion apron was further trimmed with a narrow border of white, edged again with deep blue, and it chimed in with the bright coral earrings and necklace. As Ambrose came forward the creature tried to throw a crimson handkerchief ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the rest in beauty and cleverness. Finding an auspicious day, she put on the mantel-shelf of Nabendu's bedroom two pairs of English boots, daubed with vermilion, and arranged flowers, sandal-paste, incense and a couple of burning candles before them in true ceremonial fashion. When Nabendu came in, the two sisters-in-law stood on either side of him, and said with ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... serpent 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

... the sandstone, which we now see scattered about, and the tetzontli (amygdaloide poreuse—trap or basaltic rocks), 'boiled with great tumult, there also rose the rocks of vermilion color.'" ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... dresses, trinkets, jewels, and playthings. She had a room in which to sleep but all day she sat in the room that was hung with heavy red curtains through which the sun filtered in a rouged and somber glow. Vermilion fabrics covered a long couch against the wall. Red carpets, red tapestries, tawny vases of brass inlaid with niello; crimsons and varying reds struck an insistent octave of ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... 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

... bibliophilous count. She it was who received three vellum-skins to bind the duchess's Book of Hours, and who was employed to prepare parchment for the use of the duke's scribes. And she it was who bound in vermilion leather the great manuscript of Charles's own poems, which was presented to him by his secretary, Anthony Astesan, with the text in one column, and Astesan's Latin version in the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to know how to draw? By no means. A bit of a bench to sit upon, a wall to lean against, a lead pencil, a bit of pasteboard, a needle stuck in a handle made out of a piece of wood, a little Indian ink or sepia, a little Prussian blue, and a little vermilion in three cracked beechwood spoons,—this is all that is requisite; a knowledge of drawing is superfluous. Thieves are as fond of colouring as children are, and as fond of tattooing as are savages. The ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... his oath and honour you 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, ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... being either too thin or too fat. His arms were 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

... pealing of the bells overhead, the great roar of welcome roll out over the wide space, reverberate back from Westminster Hall and the Government Buildings opposite, and die down into heart-shaking silence again, as the vermilion flash was seen at the Abbey doors. The great space was filled in every foot with a crowd that was of one heart and soul in its welcome of this formal act ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... this is the appearance of her companion. The impression the eye receives in looking on the latter is that of something soft and beautiful, of a glorious golden hue. It is the reflection of bright amber-coloured hair on a blonde skin, tinted with vermilion imparting a sort of luminous radiance divinely feminine. Scrutinise this countenance more closely; and you perceive that the features are in perfect harmony with each other, and harmonise with the complexion. You behold a face, such as the Athenian ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... thought differently, and once surreptitiously took one of his father's brushes to paint a picture; the brush on being returned to its cup was used the next day upon a worthy haberdasher, whose cheeks were shortly colored a vermilion that matched his nose. This lost the barber a customer and secured the boy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... Piute tribes were to be seen lounging in picturesque groups at nearly every railroad station. A few also traveled with us short distances in the baggage car, which is made free to them. The men were dirty, uncouth specimens of humanity, besmeared with yellow ochre and vermilion, dressed in red blankets, and bearing a hatchet in their hands, their only visible weapon. The women were dressed in tawdry colors,—striped government blankets and red flannel leggins, with a profusion of colored beads about their ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... hive, instead of a thick, square piece of wax, a thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, coloured with vermilion. The bees instantly began on both sides to excavate little basins near to each other, in the same way as before; but the ridge of wax was so thin, that the bottoms of the basins, if they had been excavated to the same depth as in the former {229} experiment, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... waves with serpents of gold. The face was clouded with thought, a shade too sombre, yet there glowed over it something like a reflection from the iris-hues beneath. A voice of using was borne away into the purple and vermilion haze that twilight began to fold over the ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... 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've 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 ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... the sensation one must get when he starts to skate for the first time in a dozen years or so. The street met two others in a moment, and here was a very nourishing sumach bush (as I guess) whose berries shocked the stunned eye with a savage splash of vermilion. Under this colour one discovered the Mecca of water-catchers in the form of an iron contrivance operating by means of a stubby lever which, when pressed down, yielded grudgingly a spout of whiteness. The contrivance was placed in sufficiently close proximity to a low wall so that one of the catchers ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... were so bright that they were grotesque and startling. Above the violently green fields the sky shone like blue glass, and across the east were two long vermilion clouds. Behind the black hill the sun had shouldered up, molten, and the shadow of Vessons, standing monkey-like on the lowest bar of the gate, lay on the stretch of wet clover behind him—a purple, elfin creature, gifted with a prehensile dignity. The cows did not appear after ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... wrist, skilfully avoiding the high underbrush, the overhanging limbs. The flies swung out and dropped softly on the water. On the second cast he caught a trout—a silvery, gleaming shape flecked with vermilion and black, shaded with mauve and ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... I left the town, my oil colors were about used up. I had made nearly a hundred sketches, and not caring to send to Rome for more paints, I used my time making pencil sketches. Among the tubes of oil colors left, of course there was the vermilion, that will outlast for a landscape painter all others, I managed to paint a jackass's head for the landlord of the inn where I boarded, with my refuse colors:—after all were gone, there still remained the vermilion. One day, out in the fields sketching an old ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... hands were chapped and cracked, even though his grandmother had knit him a pair of enormous red mittens. He appreciated the warmth of the mittens, but he hated the color. Why in the name of all that was inartistic did she choose red; not a deep, rich crimson, but a screeching vermilion, like a ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... twenty miles, crossed the Vermilion River, went into camp on high ground on the north bank, and ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... when we got ashore. The fish was there and then weighed and measured, and there and then entered on the records. Weight 9 lb. 2 oz., length 27 1/2 in., girth 17 in. She was a most handsome fontinalis, and we counted ninety-three vermilion spots ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... landscape, the pale, decaying tints of the copses, the blue air of the horizon, and the lichened stile-boards, these staring vermilion words shone forth. They seemed to shout themselves out and make the atmosphere ring. Some people might have cried "Alas, poor Theology!" at the hideous defacement—the last grotesque phase of a creed which had served ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Mahound or Termagant, than a head-gear for a reasonable creature, or Christian gentlewoman. Two long and bony arms were terminated at the elbows by triple blond ruffles, and being, folded saltire-ways in front of her person, and decorated with long gloves of a bright vermilion colour, presented no bad resemblance to a pair of gigantic lobsters. High-heeled shoes, and a short silk cloak, thrown in easy negligence over her shoulders, completed the exterior ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... nest of moss and horsehair, partly concealed under the lower branches, and containing two huge eggs streaked and spotted with azure and vermilion, and a purple and yellow feather, labelled, 'Dropped by the parent animal in her flight, on the discovery of the nest by the crew of H.M.S. Flying Dutchman. North Greenland, April 1st, 1847. Qu.? Female of Equus Pegasus. Respectfully ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... after having been the residence of several great personages was given by Charles VI. of France in 1388 to his brother the Duke of Orleans. "In this palace was a room used by the duke, hung with cloth of gold, bordered with vermilion velvet embroidered with roses; the duchess had a room hung with vermilion satin embroidered with crossbows, which were on her coat of arms; that of the Duke of Burgundy was hung with cloth of gold embroidered with windmills. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... where the tangle was deep, and there was a great fluttering and scattering of the pretenders. And then occurred more than I had looked for. The stone had hardly struck the brush when what looked like a tongue of vermilion flame leaped forth near by, and, darting across, stuck itself out of sight in the green vines on the opposite slope. A male and a female cardinal flew up also, balancing themselves on sprays of the blackberry, and uttering excitedly their ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... honey, and bird's-nests. There are also precious stones of several varieties, and the famous gold of Bhangtaphan. Forty different kinds of rice are named, but these may properly be reduced to four classes, the Common or table, the Small-grained or mountain, the Glutinous, and the Vermilion rice. From the glutinous rice arrack is distilled. The areca, or pinang-nut, and the betel, are used almost universally, chewed with lime, the lime,—being dyed with turmeric, which imparts to it a rich vermilion tint; the areca-nut is also used ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... of the chair, and the large, melancholy blue eyes were fixed on the glowing blaze within the shining ebon grate. The profile was strictly Grecian in outline, and the soft, silken hair fell in a shower of golden ripples over her small, sloping shoulders. Her lips were vermilion red, and disclosed two rows of tiny pearls whenever they parted with ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... devoted her day to setting forth the Hut to advantage. She and Roxy had been to the very top of the East Canyon for flowers, and returned loaded with spoil. Bunches of coreopsis and vermilion-tipped painter's-brush adorned the chimney-piece; tall spikes of yucca rose from an Indian jar in one corner of the room, and a splendid sheaf of yellow columbines from another; fresh kinnikinick was looped and ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... there came into 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 and crimson rosettes. She ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... been visibly in operation for a dozen years or so in the successive Whistlers put before the public during that time. First of all we remember pictures of ladies pale and attenuate poring with tender interest over vermilion scarfs. The taint of realism was on them, but even in them were hints of the pensive humour that was to fetch mankind in the well-known 'arrangements' at a later time. A good deal was left to the spectator's imagination even ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... and a forked tongue within a few inches of one's head. The last kind I shall mention is the Coral-snake, which is a most beautiful object when seen coiled up on black soil in the woods. The one I saw here was banded with black and vermilion, the black bands having each two clear white rings. The state of specimens preserved in spirits can give no idea of the brilliant colours which ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to another category. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and paint. Above, the boxes present the same confusion; actresses and women of the demi-monde, ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics—these last wearing a grave air and frowning ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... quite visible to one another. No lamps needed to be hung out, although the gaff over the bow of each boat carried its coloured signal. The cabin windows of both were full of light, and the blaze of the bacon fires flung a vermilion glare ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... skin of his arm,—for exposure had tanned his face and hands as dark as those of the natives themselves. He then gave them some trinkets, and the other woman being recalled, he painted the faces of the three with vermilion, an act understood by all Indians as signifying pacific intentions. While he was thus engaged, sixty mounted Shoshone warriors galloped up, armed and voicing their war-cry, thinking to do battle with Minnetaree foes, for whom they had mistaken ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... scar, the record of some former scrimmage. Reaching to the edge of each ear was a collar as stiff as pasteboard. His derby was tilted over his left eyebrow, shading a face brimming over with fun and expectancy. Below this was a vermilion-colored necktie and a black coat and trousers. His shoes sported three coats of blacking, which only partly concealed the ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... was separated from the Boulevard de la Madeleine by a green paddock, and was concealed in a nest of laurustinus and clematis. Autumn, that generous season, which seems in its bounty to impart a smell of ripeness to the very leaves, had already scattered dyes of gold and vermilion over the verdure of this shrubbery. A night-breeze, impregnated with vegetable perfumes, and wafting before it one of these leaves, stole between the branches—over the fragrant mould—across a grass-plot—through an open window of the cottage. The leaf tinkled. It had fallen upon the pages ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... a clear greenish-gold, the sky strewn with soft pale clouds that cast racing shadows on the soft grass underfoot, fragrant pinkish-yellow stuff strewn with bright vermilion puff-balls. Bart wished he were ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... apiece, and out of whom I can earn pretty nearly two hundred a year. I am doing Coaches for him, sir, and Charges of Cavalry; the public like the Mail Coaches best—on a dark paper—the horses and miles picked out white—yellow dust—cobalt distance, and the guard and coachman of course in vermilion. That's what a gentleman can get his bread by—portraits, pooh! it's disguised beggary, Crackthorpe, and a half-dozen men of his regiment came, like good fellows as they are, and sent me five pounds apiece for their heads, but I tell you I am ashamed to take the money." ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... The Vermilion Box Landmarks Listener's Lure Mr. Ingleside Over Bemerton's London Lavender Cloud and Silver Loiterer's Harvest One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Open Road The ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... trees grow on the Chung-nan hill? The white fir and the plum. In fur of fox, 'neath 'broidered robe, Thither our prince is come. His face glows with vermilion hue. O may ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... father to Mr. Winscombe. The latter and Gilbert Penny were conversing amicably in the lower room at the right of the stairway—a chamber with a bed that, nevertheless, was used for informal assemblage. Mr. Winscombe wore an enveloping banian of russet brocade with deep furred cuffs, and a turban of vermilion silk comfortably replacing a wigged formality. Under that brilliant colour his face was as yellow ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... pony—who arrested Rube's closest attention. There were but two feathers in his simple war bonnet, which was partly hidden by his blue-and-white blanket. His back was towards Rube, who could not see his face or know if it was painted with vermilion, but by his seat on horseback and the way he held himself Rube instantly ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... as the season of fertility approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the chrysalis of a Witchetty grub—his favourite food, and drags his body through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... towers joined together by high walls crowned with a battlement forming a cornice, and which emerge from a great moat full of water, over which one enters by a protected bridge. The castle, built wholly of brick or of stones reddened by the sun, has a vermilion tint which deprives it of its imposing effect. It is too much like a decoration ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... motor car I shall never afford With a gay vermilion bonnet, Of course I might happen to marry a lord, But it's no good counting on it. I have never reclined on the seat behind, And hurtled across the map, But my days are blest with a mind at rest, For ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton



Words linked to "Vermilion" :   red, scarlet, Chinese-red, redden, chromatic, redness



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com