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Purplish   Listen
adjective
Purplish  adj.  Somewhat purple.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Purplish" Quotes from Famous Books



... of this bath can best be described as purplish in color. They are decidedly more pleasing than those of 7 or 8, but are not as good as the best ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... cannot imagine what it looks like. My head looked more like a ball than anything else, and where the hair had been it was perfectly smooth and bald, and there was only a purplish look to show where it had grown. I ran away and hid myself in the barn and cried harder than ever. But I had something nice happen to make up ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull

... is a closely related species. It is distinguished chiefly by its somewhat larger size, and purplish to reddish brown hairs on the surface of the pileus, and by the somewhat larger spores, which, however, are small. I have found it at Ithaca, the surface of the pileus hairy, with beautiful, ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... the English language always appear to me, when I think of them, as possessing certain colours, of which I enclose a diagram. Consonants, when thought of by themselves, are of a purplish black; but when I think of a whole word, the colour of the consonants tends towards the colour of the vowels. For example, in the word 'Tuesday,' when I think of each letter separately, the consonants are purplish-black, u is a light dove colour, e is a pale emerald green, ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... given by Doctor Wiederman himself, had scarred his old arms with purplish marks, and were absorbed more and more slowly as the hours ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... took to studying the landscape, which had become a succession of sharp ridges and narrow coulees, water-worn and bleak, with a purplish line of mountains off to the left. After several miles ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... of the great gas-lamp beneath her, which was still defying the dawn. The few miserable trees and bushes on the vague lands beyond the lane were dripping with water. The sky was low and heavy, in scarcely distinguishable shades of purplish grey, and Bycars Pool, of which she had a glimpse, appeared in its smooth blackness to be not more wet than the rest of the scene. Nothing stirred. Not the tiniest branch stirred on the leafless trees, nor a leaf on ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... looked pleased, and already a murmur of applause went through the audience. M. Roussillon stroked the bulging crystal of the time-piece with a circular motion of his thumb and bowed again, clearing his throat resonantly, his face growing purplish above ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... by us, and round us, and before us, a growin' more gorgus in dress, or so it seemed to us. Gemms of every gorgus coler under the heavens and some jest the coler of the heavens when it is blue and shinin' or when it is purplish dark in the night time, or when it is full of white fleecy clouds, or when it is a ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... pure by contrast with luxuriant silky hair of the deepest black,—and large superbly shaped eyes of clear, dark steel blue, almost violet in hue,—with delicately arched brows and very long lashes of that purplish black tint which only the trite and oft-borrowed plumes of ravens adequately illustrate. The forehead was not remarkable for height, but was peculiarly broad and full with unusual width between the eyes, and if Strato were correct in his speculations with reference to Psyche's ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... leguminous plant has remarkable pods, which often measure 6 or 8 feet in length. The seeds are about 2 inches across, and half an inch thick, and have a hard, woody, and beautifully polished shell, of a dark-brown or purplish color. These seeds are frequently converted into snuff-boxes and other articles, and in the Indian bazars ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... of which attain to the height of twenty feet or more. The French Canadians call it "le poire," but in most parts of America it is known as the "service-berry," although several other names are given to it in different districts. Lucien informed his companions, while they were crushing its sweet purplish fruit between their teeth, that ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the tin box, and got it, and bit off a corner of the sticky brown lump, and ate it as he went along, and his laboured breathing calmed, and the chilly sweat dried upon his copper-burned skin, that had the purplish-black tinge in it that comes of saturation with iodide of potassium. And the pupils of his colourless eyes dwindled to pin-points, and his thick hands ceased to shake. He was not the man he had been; and he had learned the opium-habit from a woman who had managed a joint at Johannesburg, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... an earth and to come from Japan. It is grown on sandy soil or dry hills, and requires very little labor in cultivation. It is a slender-stemmed, vine-like shrub with oval-shaped leaves and pale purplish flowers in clusters. The seeds germinate in forty days, and the seedlings are transplanted when about nine inches high. When full grown they reach a height of ten feet or more, and after the first year the leaves and branches are regularly gathered and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... came slanting in from the west, cooling half the park with shadows, and lighting the rest with gleams of purplish gold. The paths around the margin of the lake, and all the sloping banks were alive with gayly dressed people, and a single boat, over which a flock of gay parasols hovered like tropical birds, mirrored ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... effect was not assisted by a pork-pie hat of black straw trimmed with green feathers, a pink ribbon from which depended a silver locket, a belt of deep magenta-red, yellow gloves, and an umbrella bright navy-blue in tint. She had over her arm a purplish water-proof, and her thick, solid boots could defy the mud ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... pods with very thick skin, becoming pale reddish-purple when dry. Mr. Laxton has cultivated the tall sugar-pea during twenty years, and has never seen or heard of it producing a purple pod; nevertheless, a flower fertilised by pollen from the purple-pod yielded a pod clouded with purplish-red, which Mr. Laxton kindly gave to me. A space of about two inches in length towards the extremity of the pod, and a smaller space near the stalk, were thus coloured. On comparing the colour with that of the purple-pod, both pods having been first dried and then soaked in water, it ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... purplish discolorations in the milky skin, and excitement, not altogether febrile, suddenly became manifest in his hot, flushed face. Then he held forth one hand, palm uppermost, eagerly compared the ugly scars at the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... Hope, and at this place. Another brownish brittle stone forms here some considerable rocks; and one which is blacker, and found in detached pieces, incloses bits of coarse quartz. A red, a dull yellow, and a purplish sand-stone, are also found in small pieces; and pretty large lumps of semi-transparent quartz, disposed irregularly in polyedral pyramidal crystals of long shining fibres. Some small pieces of the common sort are met with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, however, he turned round —when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large, blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... lacked. Water, except for the stagnant green liquid that lay in the ditches where dead men and dead horses rotted, we went without—once for as long as three days. During that time we boiled the ditch water and made tea of it. Even then, it was a deep purplish black and ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... shrivel and fall away, leaving a tuft of greenish yellow stamens in the center. Is it A. Hudsoni? Another species not often seen, but well worth culture, is A. coerulea, a kind with finely cut leaves and purplish blue flowers. Then A. coronaria, The Bride, a pure creamy white kind, with flowers 3 inches across, raised by Van Velsen, of Haarlem, is really a good addition to these dainty blossoms, and affords a vivid contrast to the fiery ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... and they could have sat opposite each other, in the bare empty room, with sparrows bustling and twittering in the lilacs against the open window! The room was ugly enough—but how she would have delighted in the delicate green of the near slopes, and the purplish haze of the woods beyond! She took a childish pleasure in such small adventures, and had the knack of giving a touch of magic to their most commonplace details. Amherst, as he finished his cold beef and indifferent eggs, found himself boyishly ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... They are generally killed by immersion in boiling water, which causes them to swell to twice their natural size, and are then dried and packed for market. The insects shrivel in drying, and assume the form of irregular grains, fluted and concave. The best sorts have a silvery-grey colour, with a purplish reflection, and seem to be dusted with a white powder. This appearance is often given by means of heavy spar, carbonate of lead, Venice talc, &c. A good lens, however, will mostly expose the fraud; or it may be detected by macerating the insect in water, and allowing the loosened pulverised ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... say the truth, I do not think I could recognise it by its general appearance; but if I had a flower of the daphne, I could no doubt tell it by its botanical characteristics. The leaves of the paper-yielding species are of a lanceolate form and purplish hue, glabrous and shining, like the leaves of laurels—to which genus the daphne is closely allied. Unfortunately, the shrub would not be in flower at this season; but if we can find one of the berries, and a leaf or two, I fancy ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... Enclave loomed up before him. Behind them, just visible in the purplish twilight haze, were the tips of the shining towers of the Earther city outside. Somewhere ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... play to be observed. The coon-hunter is a pure-blooded African, with features immobile as those of the Sphinx. And from his colour nought can be deduced. As already said, it is the depth of its ebon blackness, producing a purplish iridescence over the epidermis, that has gained for him the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... But as one swallow does not make a summer, it takes more than one cuckoo to make a spring. I confess that only yesterday I saw three sulphur butterflies, with my own eyes; I admit the catkins, and the silver-notched palm; and I am told on good colour-authority that there is a lovely purplish bloom, almost like plum-bloom, over certain copses in the valley; by taking thought, I have observed the long horizontal arms of the beech growing spurred with little forked branches of spear-shaped buds, and I see little green nipples pushing ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... features, and as she looked up at her aunt the sunshine fell upon a face of extraordinary beauty, such as is rarely seen, save in the idealized heads of the old masters. Her eyes were strangely, marvellously beautiful; they were larger than usual, and of that rare shade of purplish blue which borders the white velvet petals of a clematis. When the eyes were uplifted, as on this occasion, long, curling lashes of the bronze hue of her hair rested against her brow. Save the scarlet lines which marked her lips, her face was of that clear colourlessness which can ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... weather-beaten face took on a darker, almost a purplish, hue, and the hand that had been holding the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... which is certainly the fruit of India, (as the pine-apple is of the Eastern Islands, and the orange of the West,) was now blossoming, and a superb sight. The young leaves are purplish-green, and form a curious contrast to the deep lurid hue of the older foliage; especially when the tree is (which often occurs) dimidiate, one half the green, and the other the red shades of colours; when in full blossom, all forms a mass of yellow, diffusing a fragrance ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... fulvous-brown, rough, with numerous impressed spiral lines; the spire acute, the whorls rather convex, last slightly angular, the columella lip purplish-brown; axis solid, with a lunate concavity behind the usual ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... in no manner abashed. "I'm not seasick. Just undergoing redecoration inside. At present I have a beautiful greenish-orange feeling in my lower hold; in an hour or so it'll change to purplish-pink and my face will change from yellow to green. Then I'll be all right again. Fit to take command when you curl up, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... a roan-colored pigeon, with a purplish neck, perched on the sick man's foot. The bird shone like a rainbow, and cocked a saucy eye at Hazel, and flew up into the air a few yards, but it soon appeared that fear had little to do with this movement; for, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... he acted upon it. The morning air was deliciously cool and fresh by contrast, and he filled his lungs with it again and again. Standing here, he could discern beyond the buildings to the right the faint purplish outlines of great rounded hills. Some workmen, one of them bearing a torch, were crouching along under the side of the train, pounding upon the resonant wheels with small hammers. He recalled having heard the same sound in the watches of the night, during a prolonged ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... The mango is one of our handsomest fruit trees; the symmetry of its growth, its large glossy leaves, the delicate colouring of its young growth, which is of different shades in different varieties, the abundance of fruit that it produces, varying in colour from dull-green to yellow, red, or even purplish tints, all render it conspicuous. As well as being one of our handsomest, it is also one of our most widely distributed fruits, being found growing luxuriantly the whole length of our eastern seaboard. A ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... fine features, rolling black eyes, and luxuriant curled hair, was one of us. The hands were well formed and delicate; the complexion silky, and of nearly an olive tint; but the purplish-red broke through upon his cheeks, giving the earnest of health, as well as adding to the picturesque beauty of his face. The form was perfect, and full of manly expression, and the pretty sky-blue plaited pantaloons ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... Piccadilly Circus into the Quadrant. Its occupants were a short, Jewish-looking man with a big diamond in his shirt-front, and a woman who leaned forward more prominently than her companion. She was richly dressed, and—at least by gaslight—strikingly beautiful, with great eyes of a purplish hue, and a mass of golden-red hair that might or might not have been natural; only at close range could one have detected the ravages of an unfortunate and unbridled life—the tell-tale marks that the lavish use of powder and rouge could not ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... thickness is dissolved in the course of a century.) In several places I saw large patches of sand, quite moist, owing to the quantity of muriate of lime (as ascertained by Mr. T. Reeks) contained in them. From the compact salt- cemented sand being either red, purplish, or yellow, according to the colour of the rocky strata on which it rested, I imagined that this substance had probably been derived through common alluvial action from the layers of salt which occur interstratified in the surrounding mountains ("Journal of Researches" page 444 first edition.): but ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... sent Mr. Roebelin to make a thorough investigation. His enterprise and sagacity were rewarded, as usual. After floating round for twenty-five years amidst derision, the rumour proved true in part. Ph. Sanderiana is not scarlet but purplish rose, a very ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... begun to thin Mr. Wooster's flowing locks before he landed himself safely upon the shores of fashionable life, and Mr. Wooster's carefully-trained moustache and whiskers had a purplish tinge that looked more like art than nature. He was short and stout, with a florid complexion, sharp black eyes, and a large aquiline nose, and considered himself eminently handsome. He dressed with elaborate splendour—"dressed ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... lines. It was not until tea was over that Robin suddenly struck a more intimate note again. He had been watching her face in silence for a little while, noticing that it looked very small and pale to-day in its frame of night-dark hair, and that there were faint, purplish shadows ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... brook leaped along its rocky bed in a succession of scrambling cataracts, until it was in a perfect foam with the exertion. I sat upon a stone, gazing upon this valley, calmed, soothed, charmed with its beauty, and was speculating upon the cause of the ruddy purplish hue which I still noticed in the landscape, as I had the day before, when I heard a choir of half a dozen voices, apparently on the nearest cliff, joining in a Haydn-like hymn of praise. I drew nearer to the spot, and soon satisfied myself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... revelation, that such a wreck could have been achieved in so small a space of time. Whatever of spirituality, whatever of youthful foolish espieglerie the face had held, had vanished. The visage was like a mask—and a mask of death. There was a splash of purplish crimson beneath either eyelid, but for the rest the face was of the yellow of a week-old bone; the eyelids were puffy, and the lips were lax. The whole face quivered like a shaken jelly ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... got were some torsk and halibut, which were chiefly brought by the natives to sell; and we caught a few sculpins about the ship, with some purplish star-fish, that had seventeen or eighteen rays. The rocks were observed to be almost destitute of shell-fish; and the only other animal of this tribe seen, was a red crab, covered with spines of a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... dressed than in the outer rooms. Among them were two ladies. One, poorly dressed in mourning, sat at the table opposite the chief clerk, writing something at his dictation. The other, a very stout, buxom woman with a purplish-red, blotchy face, excessively smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom as big as a saucer, was standing on one side, apparently waiting for something. Raskolnikov thrust his notice upon the head clerk. The latter glanced at it, said: "Wait ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... sitting on a beautiful green carpet. The Earth there had come through her bad time. Away on the hillside a black forbidding patch testified to the unpleasantness of the remedial stage. Away in the distance was a beautiful tree-shaded granite hill with much show of brown foliage and purplish underspaces. Just beside that hill the flames came driving (through the old last year's feed, I suppose). His eyes followed mine the way of the flames. 'Hurray!' he said heartily. 'Now we shan't be so very long ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... she and May sat by the window watching the sunset cast its glories over the lake, a great sheet of flame, softened by a wrapping of thin purplish cloud, like some lives, struggling, fiery, triumphant, but half hidden by ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... came down. She wore a blouse of some blue stuff bought by Cecilia for the relief of people in the Balkan States, a skirt of purplish tweed woven by Irish gentlewomen in distress, and held in her hand an open envelope addressed in Cecilia's writing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... bunches of light scarlet, among the dark green leaves; but they are very, very sour, and take a great deal of sugar to sweeten them. The low bush cranberries grow on a slender trailing plant; the blossom is very pretty, and the fruit about the size of a common gooseberry, of a dark purplish red, very smooth and shining; the seeds are minute, and lie in the white pulp within the skin; this berry is not nice till it is cooked with sugar. There is a large cranberry marsh somewhere at the back of Kingston, where vast quantities grow. I heard a young gentleman say ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... out, for she was fighting for air—she seemed to be encircled by a swirling cloud of purplish mist. On—and on—and on, she was borne; she knew that she must have been drugged in some way, for consciousness ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... skin, easily torn with a pin, wings which will spring easily, and a breastbone which will yield to pressure. Pinfeathers are an indication of a young bird; older fowls are apt to have sharp scales, long hairs, long, thin necks, and flesh with a purplish tinge. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... drily, as he looked down at the speaker, a cumbrous matron attired in an over-frilled and over-flounced costume of pale grey, which delicate Quakerish colour rather painfully intensified the mottled purplish-red of her face. "But I am not at all tired, Mrs. Sorrel, I assure you! Don't trouble ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... adoration that no language could adequately express, Edna had watched and studied this costly painted window for five long years; had found a marvellous fascination in the pallid face stained with purplish blood-drops; in the parted lips quivering with human pain and anguish of spirit; in the unfathomable, divine eyes that pierced the veil and rested upon the Father's face. Not all the sermons of Bossuet, or Chalmers, or Jeremy Taylor, or Melville, had power to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... knave, of a purplish yellow complexion and mumbling speech. His comrades called him "Sott" for brevity, or "Nine Eyes," not because he had nine eyes, as he had only one, but because he boasted he had "gouged" nine enemies—that is, dug out their organs of sight with ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... asleep. The broad, high, beautiful room is like the varnished interior of a vault. The frescoed ceiling wears the national shield, some pointed vases filled with flowers and fruit, and three emblazonings of gilt pendant from which are shrouded chandeliers. A purplish gray is the prevailing tint of the ceiling. The cornice is silver white, set off by a velvet crimson. The wall paper is gold and red, broken by eight lofty mirrors, which are chastely margined with black ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... results. Finally, it occurred to him to revolve an exhausted glass tube itself. Mounting such a globe of glass on an axis so that it could be revolved rapidly by a belt running on a large wheel, he found that by holding his fingers against the whirling globe a purplish glow appeared, giving sufficient light so that coarse print could be read, and the walls of a dark room sensibly lightened several feet away. As air was admitted to the globe the light gradually ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... left the purplish dark of the trees for the open lane, where the puddles shone long and jewel-like in the ruts, the land about her was darkened, and the sky a jewel overhead. Oh, how amazing it was to her! It was almost too much. She wanted to run, and sing, and cry out for very wildness and poignancy, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... which made the Manor of Stoke Revel, on its height, unique. Far below the house, the broad river slipped towards the sea, between woods that rose tier upon tier above and beyond—woods of beech and of oak, not yet green, but purplish under the rainy mist. On the bank, woods too, and here, where the river, in excess of strength, swirled into a creek—a shining sand-bank where fishing nets were hung. Then the low, strong tower of a church, with the sombreness ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and stone variations, and their characteristics as to color, weight, size, shape and consistency were fully described. Similar variations have been observed, as is well known, in the cultivated plums. Fine blue-black fruits were seen on some shrubs and purplish or yellow fruits on others. Some exhibit a firmer texture and others a more watery pulp. Even the stones show differences which ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... son, Lord Westholt, sauntered together smoking their after-dinner cigars on the broad-turfed terrace overlooking park and gardens which seemed to sweep without boundary line into the purplish land beyond. The grey mass of the castle stood clear-cut against the blue of a sky whose twilight was still almost daylight, though in the purity of its evening stillness a star already hung, here and there, and a young moon swung low. The great spaces about them held ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... history. Ten miles away to the southward rise the red rocky hills of Aegina, Athens' old island enemy; and the tawny headlands of the Argolic coasts are visible yet farther across he horizon. Again as we follow the purplish ridge of Mount Aegaleos as it runs down the Attic coast to westward, we come to a headland then to a belt of azure water, about a mile wide, then the reddish hills of an irregular island. Every idler on the citadel can tell us all the story. On that ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... to produce this illusion is the Hamaguri,—a Japanese mollusk much resembling a clam. Opening its shell, it sends into the air a purplish misty breath; and that mist takes form and defines, in tints of mother-of-pearl, the luminous vision of H[o]rai and the palace of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... shading finely into each other, while their delicate fronded branches and foliage lie in exquisite order, inclining outward and down the sides in rich, furred, clasping sheets overlapping and felted together until the required thickness is attained. The pedicels and spore-cases give a purplish tinge, and the whole bridge is enriched with ferns and a row of small seedling trees and currant bushes with colored leaves, every one of which seems to have been culled from the woods for this special use, so perfectly do they harmonize in size, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... desk and dabbed a little ink from each bottle on to the blotting paper. "It was not printed in this room," he said; "this is black ink and the other purplish. It was done by a thick pen, and these are fine. No, it was done elsewhere, I should say. Can you make anything of the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... at the canvas of the tent till it glowed a purplish crimson against the dawn. The air choked him; it reeked with pestilence and death. O God! the futility of everything he had ever done! The lie he had written was futile; it had come too late. His coming out here was futile; he had come too soon. If he had waited another three ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... face was purplish red with cold was out in the rear of the stable, rubbing down a restive bay with loud "whoas," and now and then a stronger word and a hard twitch at the halter. He looked curiously at Madelon as she walked up to one ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... nervously closing up their living blooms. The Inkmaker, who always managed somehow to have his own colors match his surroundings, so that his hideous form would not show too plainly and frighten his victims away, was now of a dirty pinkish-yellow, blotched and striped with purplish-brown; and his tentacles were like a bunch of striped snakes. Only his eyes never changed. They lay unwinking, two huge round lenses of terrible and intense blackness, staring upwards from the base of ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Just a whiff, then." She leaned forward, holding the tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted, with a purely impersonal enjoyment, how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... of a large, classical type; a close-featured, rather long face, with an immense nose that from the front resembled the section of a bell; eyebrows like horseshoes, and very large-pupilled eyes that had the purplish-brown lustre of a horse's. His air was mournful in the extreme, and he began to speak resonantly as if his chest were a sounding-board. He used immensely long sentences, of which I ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... and immense banks of daisies bordering fields of golden grain, bending and shimmering in the wind with the deep even sweep of rising tide. Then the lake, long, irregular, half choked with tules, closed by a marsh. The valley framed by mountains of purplish gray, dull brown, with patches of vivid green and yellow; a solitary gray peak, barren and rocky, in sharp contrast to the rich Californian hills; on one side fawn-coloured slopes, and slopes with groves of crouching ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... Demoiselle, Anthropoides Virgo, which is frequently seen as far north as Lake Baikal. It has a tuft of pure white from the eye, and a beautiful black pendent ruff or collar; the general plumage purplish-grey. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... chanting the prayer of Habakkuk. Behind her in silent grandeur towered the huge outline of Lookout Mountain, shrouded at summit in gray mist; while centre and base showed dense masses of foliage, dim and purplish in the distance—a stern cowled monk of the Cumberland brotherhood. Low hills clustered on either side, but immediately in front stretched a wooded plain, and across this the child looked at the flushed sky, rapidly brightening into fiery and blinding radiance. Until her ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... grain, and it will feel tender when squeezed or pinched in your fingers. The lean should be of a bright carnation red, and the fat white rather than yellow—the suet should be perfectly white. If the lean looks dark or purplish, and the fat very yellow, do ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... a purple moon—no other colour that man could name. It looked almost unreal, like a paper moon painted very badly by a clumsy stage-hand. The jungle-moon quite often has that peculiar purplish tint, most travellers know, but few of them indeed ever try to tell what causes it. This particular moon probed down here and there between the tall bamboos, transformed the jungle—just now waking—into a mystery and a fairyland, glinted on ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... the level plateau at the head enables one to saunter safely along the edge of the river as it comes from Emerald Pool and to watch its waters, calmly bending over the brow of the precipice, in a sheet eighty feet wide, changing in color from green to purplish gray and white until dashed on a boulder talus. Thence issuing from beneath its fine broad spray-clouds we see the tremendously adventurous river still unspent, beating its way down the wildest and deepest of all its canyons in gray roaring rapids, dear to the ouzel, and ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... the launch spinning away, glowing red against a purplish black sky. I tumbled head over heels towards the huge curved shield of earth fifty miles below. I shut my eyes and that's about all I remember. I don't see how any of us could have survived. I think ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily

... Harris's hair grew and grew; because it didn't stay merely and monotonously green, it took on deeper and deeper shades of green; and then it would change and become reddish, and would go from that to some other color—purplish, yellowish, bluish, and so on—but it was never a solid color. It was always mottled. And each Sunday it was a little more interesting than it was the Sunday before—and Harris's head became famous, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... low frequency discharge is passed through moderately rarefied air, the air assumes a purplish hue. If by some means or other we increase the intensity of the molecular, or atomic, vibration, the gas changes to a white color. A similar change occurs at ordinary pressures with electric impulses of very high frequency. If the molecules of the air around a wire are moderately ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... the court fur of China and Russia, and at one time the common people were forbidden by law to wear it," said Mr. Strong. "It is a rich, purplish brown sprinkled with silver-tipped hairs, and the ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet

... masses of grey hung in the clear sky. Gently Winthrop's oars dipped from time to time, bringing them a little further from the western shore and within fuller view of the opening in the mountains. As they went, a purplish shade came upon the grey masses in the north; — the sunlight colours over Bright Spot took richer and deeper hues of purple and red; the salmon network in the south changed for rose. And then, before they had got far, the moon's crescent, two or three days old, a glittering silver thread, hung ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... hair clustering about the temples. A jolly red nose, bulbous in form, a small pair of twinkling, roguish eyes, looking out from under bushy, jet-black eyebrows, flabby cheeks, over which was spread a network of purplish fibres, full, sensual lips, and a scanty, straggling beard, that scarcely covered the short, round chin, made up a physiognomy worthy to serve as the model for a Silenus; for it was plainly that of a wine-bibber and bon vivant. Yet a certain expression of good humour ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... and blue tartan exposed for sale looked coarse-grained with the cold, and cold slips of ribbons clung to the glass of the cases like the tongues of children tipped to the frosted panes. Even the super-heated stove took on a purplish tinge of ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... big-boned, gaunt, and prematurely bowed for his age of fifty-two; dressed usually, and doubtless on this occasion, with the blue ribbon and star, in a suit of crimson watered silk, which threw up a red reflection into his red and bloated face. A red face, but of a livid, purplish red suffused all over the heavy furrowed forehead to where it met the white wig, all over the flabby cheeks, hanging in big loose folds upon the short, loose-folded red neck; massive features, but coarsened and drawn; and dull, thick, silent-looking lips, of purplish red scarce redder ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... evening. The air was full of thunder. A sense of luxurious depression filled the brain. The sky seemed to have grown heavy, and to compress the air beneath it. A kind of purplish tinge pervaded the atmosphere, and through the open window came the scents of the distant fields, which all the vapours of the city could not quench. Soon the charcoal glowed. Cosmo sprinkled upon it the incense and other substances which he had compounded, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... measuring four inches in their greatest diameter, and about one foot in depth. Skin dark brown, thick, hard, and wrinkled, or striated, sometimes reticulated or netted, much resembling the bark of some descriptions of trees; whence the name. Flesh very deep purplish-red, circled, and rayed with paler red, fine-grained, sugary, and tender. Leaves numerous, spreading, bright green, slightly stained with red; the ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... the secondary. An exhausted bulb (Fig. 2) containing traces of oxygen was placed within a primary spiral of three turns, and, on passing the jar discharge, a circle of light was seen within the bulb in close proximity to the primary circuit, accompanied by a purplish glow, which lasted for a second or more. On heating the bulb the duration of the glow was greatly diminished, and it could be instantly extinguished by the presence of an electromagnet. Another exhausted bulb (Fig. 3), surrounded by a primary spiral, was contained in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... Capillitium none, or very imperfectly developed; spores of some shade of brown, rarely purplish ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... curassow turkey," she said, calling another very handsome bird, almost as large as an ordinary turkey. It was of a dark-violet colour, with a purplish-green gloss on the back and breast. The lower part was of the purest white, while the crest was of a bright golden-yellow, greatly increasing the beauty of the bird. John called it the crested curassow—the ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... the breath came and went stertorously between his bloated lips. His face was puffed and of a purplish hue. ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish

... bud, Fig. 74, about three-quarters of an inch long, is covered by two purplish scales which lend special significance to its whole appearance. The trunk is extremely individual because it rises stout and shaft-like, away above the ground without a branch as shown in Fig. 73. The tree flowers in the latter part of May but the cup that holds the fruit persists ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... little. Even Wilson's superb nerves had felt the strain of the afternoon, and under the girl's dark eyes were purplish shadows. She leaned ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... decorative clumps in a city park, and others covered acres and tens of acres; and at the foot of the slopes on either side, like decorative fringes, were thin and unbroken lines of forest. Between these two lines of forest lay the open valley of soft and undulating meadow, dotted with its purplish bosks of buffalo willow and mountain sage, its green coppices of wild-rose and thorn, and its clumps of trees. In the hollow of the valley ran ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... for his leg—which leg, I recall, was incased in a rude, splintlike arrangement of plaited straw. The surgeon took off the straw and the packing beneath it. The giant had a hole right through his knee, from side to side, and the flesh all about it was horribly swollen and purplish- black. So the surgeon soused the joint, wound and all, with iodine; the youth meanwhile staring blandly up at the ceiling with his arms crossed on his wide breast. I stood right by him, looking into his face, and ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... thin gangplank and enter the sub. The lights in it are indirect and are purplish green. Hitler Number Three shows us the telepathic machine, the radar, and the viso-screen that pictures everything going on upstairs on Earth, and on Mars, Jupiter and all other planets. There are four other beetleheads on the ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... forlorn object, haggard and unshorn, with an arm done up in a filthy bandage, a cheek and head cut, and bloody, and one eye purplish black and entirely closed. "What have you to say for yourself?" queried ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... away, until it was reduced to a mere cheese rind of a moon, set up on end against the delft-blue platter of a perfect sky. We waited until it showed its thin rim in the heavens, and then, in the softened half-glow, with the purplish shadows deepening between the brown-gray walls of the dead city, I just naturally turned my imagination ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... scarcely moved by a ripple, now appeared lit up with countless fires, and a purplish haze, like a low flame, was visible in every direction. I directed the attention of my companion to this strange appearance. Notwithstanding the intensity of her anxiety, she immediately entered into an explanation of the phenomenon, and ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... passing into this winter paradise! The river bank is lined with pussy willows; they gleam in the sunshine like copper. Farther back there are different varieties of dogwood, some with delicate green twigs and some a cherry red. The wild rose and the raspberry vines add their glossy purplish and cherry red stems to the color combination, and a contrast is afforded by the silvery gray bark of stray aspens. A still softer and more beautiful shade of silver gray is seen in the big hornet's nest of last year which still hangs suspended from a low sugar maple. ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... overhead, where the branches began, was a heavy roof of foliage, impervious to the sunshine, brooding, dark and sullen as a thundercloud, over the cavernous world beneath. There was no undergrowth, no clinging vines, no bloom, no color; only the dark, innumerable tree trunks and the purplish-brown, scented, and slippery earth. The air was heavy, cold, and still, like cave air; the silence as blank and awful as the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... sometimes under one foot, sometimes ascending, or even climbing, to the height of several feet. The flowers are rather large, and deep-red in the original variety; pod much inflated, membranous one to two inches long, on a stipe varying from two to six lines. The species varies, with light, purplish-pink flowers, S. CORONILLAEFOLIA; and white flowers, S. ALBIFLORA. The difference in the length of the stipes of the pod does not, as had been supposed, coincide with the difference in the colour of the flower. This plant acts in a peculiar way upon sheep, driving them insane until death ensues. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... She shuddered as she saw a stain of blood growing larger and larger upon the bandages. The young man's breast was uncovered, as though for the cool night air to assist his respiration. A narrow bandage fastened the dressings of the wound, around which a purplish circle of extravasated blood was gradually increasing in size. A deep sigh broke from her lips. She leaned against one of the columns of the bed, and gazed, through the apertures in her mask, upon the harrowing spectacle before her. A hoarse harsh groan passed ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere



Words linked to "Purplish" :   purplish-red, purple, purplish-brown, purplish-green, purplish-blue, chromatic, purplish-black



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