verdigris

English

Etymology

From the Middle English vertegrez, from the Old French verte grez, meaning vert d'aigre, "green vinegar". The modern French writing of this word is French vert-de-gris (literally “green of gray”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈvɝ.də.ɡɹis/, /ˈvɝ.də.ɡɹi/, /ˈvɝ.də.ɡɹɪs/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

verdigris (countable and uncountable, plural verdigrises)

1. A blue-green patina or rust that forms on copper-containing metals.

   Synonym: aerugo

   • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC, page 17:

     Let's to the museum. Cannon-balls; arrow-heads; Roman glass and a forceps green with verdigris.

   • 1987, Gene Wolfe, chapter XLVIII, in The Urth of the New Sun, 1st US edition, New York: Tor Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 281:

     […] there were three small brass coins there, the gift of Ymar. Their legends, like their faces, had worn away; and they were dark with verdigris — in appearance precisely the ancient things they were.

2. (organic chemistry, dated) Copper acetate.

   Synonym: Spanish green

3. The colour of this patina or material.

   verdigris:  

   Synonym: Spanish green

   • 1735, [John Barrow], “GREENS”, in Dictionarium Polygraphicum: Or, The Whole Body of Arts Regularly Digested. , volume I (A–H), London: C Hitch and C Davis , and S Austen , →OCLC:

     Gamboge is one of the firſt yellows, which may be made to produce five or six ſorts of Green with verdegreaſe, according as the gambooge is in the greater or leſſer proportion; if it abounds, it will make a tolerable oak green, and being mixt with a greater quantity of verdegreaſe, it will make a fine graſs Green.

   • 1843, [John Ruskin], chapter 2, in Modern Painters , volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., , →OCLC, part II (Of Truth), section VI (Of Truth of Vegetation—Conclusion), § 7, page 123:

     […] let them tell me candidly which is nearest truth, the gold of Turner, or the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens in which Claude, with the industry and intelligence of a Sevres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground.

   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 24, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part One: Latitudes and Departures, page 242:

     Jeremiah found himself indoors, perfecting his Draftsmanship, bending all day over the work-table, grinding and mixing his own Inks,— siftings and splashes ev'rywhere of King's Yellow, Azure, red Orpiment, Indian lake, Verdigris, Indigo, and Umber.

Derived terms

Related terms

• verdigrisy

Translations

Verb

verdigris (third-person singular simple present verdigrises, present participle verdigrising, simple past and past participle verdigrised)

1. To cover, or coat, with verdigris.
   • 1853 August 4 – 1858 January 3 (date written), Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, & Co., published 1870, →OCLC:

     […] there were always some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle […]

See also

• 🜨 (alchemical symbol)

References

Further reading

• verdigris on Wikipedia.Wikipedia