GILDING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Gilding

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/gˈɪldɪŋ/ Listen

noun

Gilding n.

The art or practice of overlaying or covering with gold leaf; also, a thin coating or wash of gold, or of that which resembles gold.

Gold in leaf, powder, or liquid, for application to any surface.

Any superficial coating or appearance, as opposed to what is solid and genuine.

Gilding metal, a tough kind of sheet brass from which cartridge shells are made.

verb

Gild v. t. (past & past part. gilded or gilt; pres. part. gilding)

To overlay with a thin covering of gold; to cover with a golden color; to cause to look like gold. "Gilded chariots." "No more the rising sun shall gild the morn."

To make attractive; to adorn; to brighten. "Let oft good humor, mild and gay, Gild the calm evening of your day."

To give a fair but deceptive outward appearance to; to embellish; as, to gild a lie.

To make red with drinking. (Obs.) "This grand liquior that hath gilded them."

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Etymology of 'Gilding'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Gilding" Quotes from Famous Books

... once doing my duty, and making you more fair. I am gilding my valley, while brightening your wing. [Tearing himself from love, and dashing toward the right.] But the shadow still fights all along the line of retreat. There is much to ...

— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... picture in my brain That only fades to come again: The sunlight, through a veil of rain To leeward, gilding A narrow stretch of brown sea-sand; A light-house half a league from land; And two young lovers ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... certain Gilded Youth—every boat-load has its Gilded Youth—whose father was president of so many industrial concerns, and the vice-president of so many banks and trust companies that it was hard to look at the boy without blinking at his gilding. Henry was betting on the Gilded Youth; so the young doctor fell to me. For the first three or four days during which we kept fairly close tab on their time, the Doctor had the Gilded Youth beaten two hours to one. Henry bought enough lemonade for me and smoking room swill of one ...

— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... best families in the neighborhood visited a man whose manner was quiet and stately, his income larger than their own, and his house and table luxurious without vulgar pretensions, and the red-hot gilding and glare with which the injudicious parvenu ...

— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... an impious comparison, and unworthy of a gentleman who was so good a Christian and so devout, and of whom some pens so well affected to him write so much, that already they pass on (as is generally said) to ennoble his actions, gilding his errors with the excellent gold of vigor and rhetoric. Some of them, however, refrain almost entirely from discussing this contention, which gave the Dutch of Batavia much matter ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various

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