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Vitriol   Listen
verb
Vitriol  v. t.  (past & past part. vitrioled or vitriolled; pres. part. vitrioling or vitriolling)  
1.
(Metal.) To dip in dilute sulphuric acid; to pickle.
2.
To vitriolize. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vitriol" Quotes from Famous Books



... well, Mister Gabriel," said Black Bart. The voice was oily, but the oil was oil of vitriol. "You not only come late, but you come incognito. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... hard) in the story of the Argonauts, where Medea concocts a magic brew. She put divers herbs in it, herbs yielding coloured juices such as safflower and alkanet, and soapwort and fleawort to give consistency or 'body' to the lye; she put in alum and blue vitriol (or sulphate of copper), and she put in blood. The magic brew was no more and no less than a dye, a red or purple dye, and a prodigious deal of chemistry had gone to the making of it. For the copper was there to produce a 'lake' or copper-salt of the vegetable alkaloids, which copper-lakes ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... tons of salts. By Mr. Croll's process, however, we get an increased yield of salts on the acid used, as follows: The experiments were made with sulphuric acid of the specific gravity of 1838, or nearly concentrated oil of vitriol; and the quantity used was 8 ounces in each experiment. The ammoniacal liquor was of uniform strength throughout all the experiments, being kept in a corked jar; and the solution of sulphate of ammonia was passed through filter paper ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... it? Whatever is mild and kindly is there. But Jack Calvin has thrown bird-lime and vitriol upon it, and whoever but touches the cover dirties his fingers ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... smiled. "A Zouave? Just as nothing is sacred to a sapper, so is nothing hurtful to a Zouave. They have hides like hippopotamuses, those fellows. You could dip them in vitriol ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... patronizing tone. Macgregor was a very good, earnest fellow, but he should judge him to be lacking in tact or adaptability, fine sensibilities, and that sort of rot. But never mind. Didn't he catch it! Oh, no. My Sally Ann! Boiling lard and blue vitriol, and all in the chief's most sweet-scented lavender style, though all the time I could see the danger lights burning through his port-holes. I tell you I've had my diminished moments, but I don't think I was ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... present—Miss Spight—a lady of a certain age, who, believing, as the kindly beings of her order do, that there was too large a flow of the milk of human kindness current in the world, deemed it her mission to temper this dispensation by the admixture of as much vitriol and vinegar as in her lay: she succeeded pretty well, too, for that matter, in her practice ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... pure metallic state, but in combination with other substances, chiefly as sulphide in zinc blende, as carbonate in calamine, and as the silicate in the kieselzinc ore; also, with sulphuric acid, the "vitriol of zinc." ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... connected with this mine. In the year 1719, while some miners were exploring an abandoned passage, they discovered a human body, preserved from corruption by the blue vitriol or sulphate of copper produced in the mine under the influence of the atmosphere and water. It was that of a handsome young man. On being brought to the surface, people from all directions flocked to see it, but nobody could ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... evening I drank more than a liter of it, and it didn't hurt me one bit. Better than that, another time when we were on the coast of Coromandel some savages gave us I don't know what sort of a mixture of pepper and vitriol, and that didn't hurt me one bit. I ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... "Look at Keith. He looks like a rattler with his fangs pulled. I'll bet he c'ud spit bilin' vitriol right now." ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... there he could see himself harshly forcing the bitter medicine upon his son, the cure for a disease for which he was himself responsible; he could see his son's look and could not deny its justice. "I reckon he hates me," thought Hiram, pouring vitriol into his own wounds, "and I reckon ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... northern parts of Cujo there are mines of gold and copper, but they are not worked owing to the indolence of the inhabitants. It has also rich mines of lead, sulphur, vitriol, salt, gypsum, and talc or asbestos. The mountains near the city of Juan are entirely composed of white marble, in stratified slabs of five or six feet long by six or seven inches thick, all regularly cut and polished ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... vitriol, may be concentrated or diluted. It is frequently thrown over the person to disfigure the features or destroy the clothes. Parts of the body touched by it are stained, first white, and then dark brown or black. The presence of corrosion of the mouth is as important as the chemical tests. Black woollen ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... In drawing some vitriol one night, he upset the carboy, and the acid eating its way through the floor, played havoc with the furniture of a luxurious bank in the flat below. He was discharged for this, but soon obtained another engagement as a press operator in Cincinnati. He spent his leisure in the Mechanics' ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... shade by boiling for half-an-hour, and a dark brown by boiling for two hours or so. It is better, however, to get the shade by altering the quantity of Crotal used. The addition of sufficient oil of vitriol or acetic acid to make the bath slightly acid will be an improvement (a very small ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet

... three hours. His torments were so great that they were too much for that frame of iron and vitriol; Jacques Collin, whose brain felt on fire with insanity, suffered such fearful thirst that he unconsciously drank up all the water contained in one of the pails with which the cell was supplied, forming, with ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... Question Among Soldiers—Partisan Politicians Attacked With Vitriol—Partisan Explanations Did Not Explain—Red Propaganda Helped Confuse The Case—Russians Of Archangel, Too, Were Concerned—We Who Were There Think Of Those Pitiable Folk And Their Hopeless Military And Political Situation That Tried Our Patience And That Of The Directors Of The Expedition Who ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... fists and ranted with incredible sounds. When breath failed, he staggered, gasping, and swept his audience with the glazed, unmeaning stare of drink or lunacy. The merchant spoke up, timid and deprecating. As though the words were vitriol, the other started, whirled face to face, and was seized with a ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... the raw and festering wound of an old friend's conscience, Cottle! but it is oil of vitriol! I but barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of it—not from resentment, God forbid! but from the state of my bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted human fortitude to let in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... elapse before any profit could be expected, she managed with the utmost frugality. The Dr. mean time acted the part of a tutor to miss, in Arithmetic, Latin, and Mathematics, to which she discovered the strongest propensity. All things being properly disposed for the grand operation, the vitriol furnace was set to work, which requiring the most intense heat for several days, unhappily set fire to the house; the stairs were consumed in an instant, and as it surprized them all in their first sleep, it was a happy circumstance that no life perished. This ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... than the bad woman, whose name was La Chouette (Screech-Owl), cried, 'I have got some vitriol; I am going to wash the face of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... could utter such blasphemous sentiments—for so they undoubtedly appear to us—a being of ordinary flesh and blood? One would rather have supposed his solids to be of bronze, and his fluids of vitriol, than have attributed to them the character which he describes. That he should have been a gentle, meditative creature, around whose knees had clung eleven 'young vipers' of his own begetting, is ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... horrible barbarities of Southern soldiers cause no comment? Why is the sympathy of the British Parliament reserved for the poor women of New Orleans, deprived of their elegant amusement of throwing vitriol into soldiers' faces, and practicing indecencies inconceivable in any other state of society? Why is all expression of sympathy on the Southern side? There is a class of women in New Orleans whom Butler protects from horrible barbarities, that up to his day ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... from stimulants, and a low, poor diet, accompanied with the horizontal position, and bottles of boiling water to the feet. At the same time the patient should suck through a quill, every hour, half a wine-glass of water in which 10 or 15 drops of the elixir of vitriol has been mixed, and, till further advice has been procured, keep a towel wrung out of cold water on the chest or stomach, according to the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... word-splitting cowardice. Your turn has come. The troops are in readiness; we are drilling the unemployed in event of civil war, and you had better look out. "Obey me,"' added the General, insensibly sliding into a popular quotation, '"and my nature's ile: disobey me, and it's still ile, but it's ile of vitriol."' ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... elderly gentlemen on both sides who exude vitriol. It is a pity that they are so much in evidence. But even some of them retain their sanity. The following is from the Cambridge Magazine ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... Vitriol. Commercial name for concentrated sulphuric acid (1.835 specific gravity). This is never used in a battery and would ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... association. Secret coalitions had, it is true, previously existed, but could never achieve great results. In Glasgow, as Symonds {214} relates, a general strike of weavers had taken place in 1812, which was brought about by a secret association. It was repeated in 1822, and on this occasion vitriol was thrown into the faces of the two working-men who would not join the association, and were therefore regarded by the members as traitors to their class. Both the assaulted lost the use of their eyes in consequence of the injury. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... my last penny I'm goin' to buy vitriol—I don' care who it hits! An' I'll throw it in the face o' the wench that he goes with ... I don' care who it hits ... right in the middle o' the mug. I don' care! It c'n burn up his fine-lookin' phiz! I don' care! ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... des vallons par des chemins rapides: l'exposition plus heureuse fait cultiver du jardinage et des arbres fruitiers; il y a beaucoup de chanvre dans ces environs. De l'autre cote du vallon, sur la gauche de la Reuss, est une usine ou on fabriquoit de l'alum et du vitriol, les travaux ont cesse, ces etablissemens et l'exploitation des mines sont peu connus et peu suivis en Suisse. La Reuss semble toujours s'enfoncer d'avantage, par-tout elle roule ses flots avec bruit et fracas, elle s'est creusee un lit a des profondeurs incroyables; il n'y a point d'endroit ou ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... you have arsenic, Vitriol, sal-tartar, argaile, alkali, Cinoper: I know all.—This fellow, captain, Will come, in time, to be a great distiller, And give a say—I will not say directly, But ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... even the printing or staining of paper for hangings, where the vehicle and color in its entirety is applied and remains. It follows, therefore, that many chemicals used in dyeing have only a transitory use, and are washed away completely—such as oil of vitriol, much used in woolen dyeing—and that of others only a very minute quantity is finally left on the cloth, as is the case in antimony and arsenic in cotton dyeing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... every inhalation; it is absorbed by flowers, to be employed in the perfection of the fruit; many minerals are incapable of the various uses of society, until oxygen has attacked and united with them. It gives us lime and soda, the oil of vitriol, and common salt; the mineral pigments in common use are impossible without it; and the beautiful colors of our autumn leaves are due to the combination of oxygen with their juices. It enters into all plans and operations with a helping hand; animals and plants owe their lives to it; but when the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... not polite in young ladies to kick." She pressed Celia down with a hand upon her back, and her voice changed. "Lie still," she commanded savagely. "Do you hear? Do you know what this is, Mlle. Celie?" And she held the flask towards the girl's face. "This is vitriol, my pretty one. Move, and I'll spoil these smooth white shoulders for you. How ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... of artificial wells and fountains, made in imitation of the natural sources and baths; as tincted upon vitriol, sulphur, steel, brass, lead, nitre, and other minerals. And again we have little wells for infusions of many things, where the waters take the virtue quicker and better, than in vessels or basins. And amongst them we have a water which we call Water of Paradise, being, by that we do to it ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon

... have arsenic, Vitriol, sal-tartre, argaile, alkaly, Cinoper: I know all.—This fellow, Captain, Will come in time to be a great distiller, And give a say (I will not say directly, But very near) at the philosopher's ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... Bazalgette, written with cream—of tartar and oil—of vitriol. She forgave her niece and wished her every happiness it was possible for a young person to enjoy who had deceived her relations and married beneath her. She felt pity rather than anger; and there was no reason why Mr. and Mrs. Dodd should not visit her house, as ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... thought they beheld the emblems of our Saviour's passion. The golden-hued peta was found beside the myriad-flowering oleander, while the undergrowth was braided with cacti and aloes. The poisonous manchineel was observed, a drop of whose milky juice will burn the flesh like vitriol. Here the invaders also observed and noted the night-blooming cereus. They were delighted by fruits of which they knew not the names, such as the custard-apple, mango, zapota, banana, and others, growing in such ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... torture me no longer:" cried the advocate imperatively: "Perfect knowledge, perhaps, may stun me; but far worse to bear than were a shower of vitriol poured on a green wound, are these distilled, dire drops of apprehension. Sir, are you guilty that you thus stand dumb? What have you done injurious towards my ward, that you so linger upon the street, and to my queries but gaze like one ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... Poland's downfall and all that, in the most beautiful, the most musical, way." Besides the "hard, inartistic modulations, the startling progressions and abrupt changes of mood" that jarred on the old-fashioned Moscheles, and dipped in vitriol the pen of Rellstab, there is in the Mazurkas the greatest stumbling block of all, the much exploited rubato. Berlioz swore that Chopin could not play in time—which was not true—and later we shall see that Meyerbeer thought ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... scrape off all the old whitewash, and wash the walls with a solution of two ounces of white vitriol to four gallons of water. Soak a quarter of a pound of white glue in water for twelve hours; strain and place in a tin pail in a kettle of boiling water. When melted, stir in the glue eight pounds of whiting and water enough to make it as thick as common whitewash. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... coffee was washed out and brought to London; it was put on the market, but could not be sold; the combination of sea-water and hides had spoiled it. The owner tried all sorts of doctorings: he used colouring matter—indigo, kurkuma, chrome, copper vitriol—he had it rolled in hogsheads with leaden bullets. Nothing availed; he had to sell it at auction. Henriksen's agent bid ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... You've guessed my secret. I'm the Spirit of Spring. Last Wednesday, when I lost my marquise ring, I was the spirit of vitriol, but now——I'm a poet. I've thought it all out and decided that I shall be the American Sappho. At any moment I am quite likely to rush madly across the pavement and sit down on the curb and indite several stanzas ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... words as "sentimentality" and "entusymusy,"—one of the least admirable of Lord Byron's bequests to our language,—for the purpose of ridiculing him into silence. An overdressed woman is not so pleasing as she might be, but at any rate she is better than the oil of vitriol squirter, whose profession it is to teach young ladies to avoid vanity by spoiling ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... violent spasmodic jerk, when the prettily tinted liquid is ejected from all the little cones. After a pause, during which it seems to concentrate its energies, there is another and another twitch, each the means of sprinkling broadcast what is said to be a corrosive liquid, almost as virulent as vitriol. From almost any part of the body this liquid ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Whatever you may think of Mr. EVANS' work, whether it attracts or violently repels, there can be no question of its devastating skill. His sketches, no more than a few pages in length, contain never an idle word, and the phrases bite like vitriol. Moreover he employs an idiom that is (I conjecture) a direct transcription from native speech, which adds enormously to the effect. Understand me, not for worlds would I commend these volumes haphazard to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various

... Experiment, limiting the Chymist's principle, Adusta nigra sed perusta alba, by several Instances of Calcin'd Alabaster, Lead, Antimony, Vitriol, and by the Testimony of Bellonius, about the white Charcoles of Oxy-caedar, and by that of Camphire. (140, 141, 142.) That which follows about Inks was misplac'd by an Errour of the Printer, for it belongs to what has been formerly said of ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... stock was washed one hour, but given a brush of three hours, and this brush was harder than in run No. 135. Bleach to the extent of 19.8 per cent of the fiber was used, assisted by 1 pint of oil of vitriol, and the resulting color was an improvement over that of run No. 135. After adding 13.5 per cent of clay and sizing with 1.1 per cent of resin size, the furnish was given one-half hour's light brush, tinted, and run on the machine, which was set at 70 feet per minute. This stock ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill

... flattened out the curate, Pills? Couldn't you give Grubbins something—something to make him leathery sick—eh?" A flash of inspiration crossed my mind. I went to the shop of the village apothecary. He knew me; I had often purchased vitriol, which I poured into Grubbins's inkstand to corrode his pens and hum up his coat-tail, on which he was in the habit of wiping them. I boldly asked for an ounce of chloroform. The young apothecary winked ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... commenced. It was a case of vitriol-throwing. A wife, in order to avenge herself on her husband's mistress, had burned her face and eyes. She had left the Assize Court acquitted, declared to be innocent, amid the applause of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... bleaching stuffs, and in the manufacture of paper from vegetable fibers, and in the manufacture of gelatine extracted from bones, as well as in fermenting molasses and in the manufacture of sugar from beet root. Sulphur is also used in the preparation of gunpowder and oil of vitriol, and in the manufacture of matches and cultivation of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various

... the recollection of her first love for the factory hand, Fedka Molodenkoff, but, recalling this first love, she also recalled the manner of its ending. The end of it was that this Molodenkoff, while in his cups, by way of jest, smeared her face with vitriol, and afterward laughed with his comrades as he watched her writhing in pain. She remembered this, and she pitied herself; and, thinking that no one heard her, she began to weep, and wept like a child—moaning, snuffling and swallowing ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... dances in Birmingham I felt that high-school boys ought to be kept at home at night, but after attending these dances I realized that such restriction was altogether inadequate, and that the only way to deal with them effectively would be to pickle them in vitriol. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... I might have smallpox and be pitted for life, or be scalded in the face as poor people's babies often are, or have vitriol thrown over me as lots of women do in Paris, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... then be drawn off and used, or reduced with spirits of turpentine till of the requisite consistency. For making a varnish suitable for iron patterns, take sufficient oil of turpentine for the purpose of the job in hand, and drop into it, drop by drop, some strong commercial oil of vitriol, when the acid will cause a dark syrupy precipitate in the oil of turpentine, and continue to add the drops of vitriol till the precipitate ceases to act, after which pour off the liquid and wash the syrupy mass with water, when it will be ready for use. When the iron pattern is to be varnished, ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown

... Experience and Ingenuity are required to dye it of those beautiful Colours! How widely are the Drugs and other Ingredients dispers'd through the Universe, that are to meet in one Kettle. Allom, indeed, we have of our own; Argol we might have from the Rhine, and Vitriol from Hungary; all this is in Europe; but then for Saltpetre in Quantity, we are forc'd to go as far as the East-Indies: Cochenille, unknown to the Ancients, is not much nearer to us, tho' in a quite different Part of the Earth; we buy it, 'tis true, ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville

... promise so fair to effect so desireable a purpose, as carrying a good stock of various vegetable acids in every ship, but particularly in ships employed upon such services as the Sirius was. The elexir of vitriol, hitherto allowed, and -formerly considered, not only as a preventive, but as a cure, was found by no means to answer the purpose of the former, far less of the latter. The vegetable acids, which ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... large black bottle and asked if there was wine in it. "Oh no, but vitriol, it burns awful and is very dangerous," said the old lady. Mary did not wish to hear more, but rushed out of the room, fearing the bottle would explode. She told the old lady that she never would touch anything unless she knew what ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip

... starch sugar, while potassa darkens the color of starch sugar, but does not alter that of cane sugar. But the copper test is far more delicate. Add to the solution to be tested, a few drops of blue vitriol, and then a quantity of potassa solution, and apply heat; if the cane sugar is pure, the liquor will remain blue, while, if it be adulterated with starch sugar, it will ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... accurate. His ability to impart his knowledge to such students as were eager to learn was also unquestioned, but for the indifferent and lazy, or for the dull or poorly prepared, his words were like drops of vitriol. ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... spread upon iron plates, and thus dried with several little furnaces contained in one room. This mode of preparation must greatly tend to deprive the shrub of its native juices, and to contract a rust from the iron on which it is dried. This may probably be the cause of vitriol turning tea into an inky blackness. We therefore do not think with Boerhaave, that the preparers employ green vitriol for improving the colour of the finer green teas. It may however be concluded, from the colour of bohea, souchong, and such ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... if to keep out bitter, drowning waters; her face was white as wax within the starched blue-white of the nun's coif; his slow sentences fell one by one upon her naked heart, and ate their way in like vitriol. Quite well, too well, she knew what ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... his pocket a small phial, and with the quickness of lightning dashed it in the face of the unfortunate Josephine. It was shattered in a hundred pieces, and the contents—VITRIOL—ran in her eyes and down her face, burning her flesh in the most horrible manner. She shrieked with agony the most intense, and the Doctor rushed into the room, followed by Mrs. Franklin. They both stood aghast when they ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... hundreds of other things—who counts her love? She is guilty of crime; she is granted to have had a motive; and she is punished. Has enough been done when the jury acquits a jealous murderess, or a thrower of vitriol? Such cases are spectacular, but no attention is paid to the love of the woman in the millions of little cases where love, and love only, was the impulse, and the statute sentencing her to so and so ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... regular, not unlike those of a clumsy bear. When he stood up, his comrades shouted to him excitedly; they would come and tear him into little pieces; they would slit his belly so that he could see his own bowels; they would slash him with their knives and rub his wounds with vitriol if he didn't at once lay down his weapons and let them ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... [Symbol: sulfur and fire [Symbol: fire]; only, however, where it is permitted by the context.] The Rectification of the subject (man) taken up by the Art, is achieved through the purification of the earthly elements according to the indication of the alchemists who call the beginning of the work "Vitriol," and form an acrostic from the initial letters of this word: "Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem" [ Visit the interior of the earth; by purifying you will find the hidden stone]. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... and a judicious display of our double-barrelled guns kept the three scoundrels in check. They insisted on our tasting some of their barbarous liquor, however, and horrible stuff it was,—distiller's "high-wines," strongly dashed with vitriol or something worse. No wonder that men become fiends incarnate on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... violent effervescence, or explosion of air, by the acids of vitriol, nitre, and of common salt, and by distilled vinegar; the neutral saline liquors thence produced having each their ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black

... have used both ground and crushed, and always to advantage at ten to twelve bushels per acre; bought from manufacturers here, and agents of houses in New York; but I am using the crushed dissolved by oil of vitriol, as prepared by myself on my farm in Calvert in the following way: The bones, (which we buy in the neighborhood at 50 cents per 112 lbs.) after breaking them with a small sledge hammer on an old anvil, we put at the rate of three bushels in half a hogshead, and apply to that quantity ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... its preparations, has been taken, in dangerous quantities, induce vomiting, without a moment's unnecessary delay, by giving, immediately, in a small quantity of water, ten grains of ipecac, and ten grains of sulphate of zinc, (white vitriol, which is the most prompt emetic known,) and repeat the dose every fifteen minutes, till the stomach is entirely emptied. Where white vitriol is not at hand, substitute three or four grains of blue vitriol, (sulphate of copper.) When the stomach is emptied, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... grumble at the cook for putting too much seasoning in, while in fact he has put in none at all, except that contained in the water. Of bitter, bad, disgusting waters I have drunk not a few nauseous draughts; you may try alum, vitriol, boiling, etc., etc., to convince yourself that you are not more stupid than travelers you will meet at home, but the ammonia and other salts are there still; and the only remedy is to get away as quickly as ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... Paths.—These may be destroyed by strong brine, applied when hot. Or mix 1/2 lb. of oil of vitriol with 6 gallons of water, and apply, taking care not to get the vitriol on ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... drop of pity for him, turns from earth, and striking confidence out of his very despair, like fire from flint, sees there his Kinsman-Redeemer. 'I know that my Redeemer liveth.' Men may mock him, friends may turn against him, the wife of his bosom may tempt him, comforters may pour vitriol instead of oil into his wounds, yet he, sitting on his dunghill there, poverty-stricken and desolate, knows that God is of kin to him, and will do the kinsman's part by him. The very metaphor implies that the divine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... immediately to conclude that the body submitted to the trial has no colour at all, but must first try how it will turn out with the addition of saline substances. It ought, therefore, to be boiled with pot-ash, common salt, sal ammoniac, tartar, vinegar, alum, or vitriol, and then tried upon the stuff: if it then exhibit no colour, it may safely be pronounced to be unfit for dyeing with. But if it yields a dye or colour, the nature of this dye must then be more closely examined, which may be ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... factors which when combined produce an effect always "give" something of which when uncombined they show no trace. There is no trace; of sweetness in the constituents of sugar of lead, or of blueness in the constituents of blue vitriol. In not a single case, if we are to follow the logic of the theist, is there a cause adequate to produce an effect, if we are to follow the reasoning of some theists; in each case we should have to assume some occult agent as responsible ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... rubber. You observe I do not ask how he got it. I will not ask you. All you need do is to collect rubber. Use our improved methods. Gum copal rubbed in the kinky hair of the chief and then set on fire burns, so my agents tell me, like vitriol. For collecting rubber the chief is no longer valuable, but to his successor it is an object-lesson. Let me recommend also the chicotte, the torture tower, the 'hostage' house, and the crucifix. Many other stimulants ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... yesterday, and just what will come of it we don't as yet know, because Washington and Cromwell and Caesar have not been seen since, but we have great fears for them, because seventeen car-loads of vitriol and a thousand extra tons of coal were ordered by the Lord High Steward of the palace to be delivered to the Minister of Justice ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... Fontaine's prediction, declines to retire to the country. She is still living in her splendid shop on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, but she is a widow now for the second time. Remonencq, in fact, by the terms of the marriage contract, settled the property upon the survivor, and left a little glass of vitriol about for his wife to drink by mistake; but his wife, with the very best intentions, put the glass elsewhere, and Remonencq swallowed the draught himself. The rascal's appropriate end vindicates Providence, as well as the chronicler of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... teeth of the party whose existence he conceived to be ruinous to his country, or perhaps prejudicial to his own prospect of a sinecure. The journals printed their columns in gall; the satirists dipped their pens in concentrated acid; the popular haranguers dashed the oil of vitriol of contempt in each other's faces. The confusion, the collision, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... it would please the Parliament that they may yet have the whipping, fleecing, and flaying of us in their diabolical courts, to tear the flesh from our bones, and into our wide wounds, instead of balm, to pour in the oil of tartar, vitriol, and mercury. Surely a right, reasonable, innocent, and soft-hearted petition! O the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... to have been green carbonate of copper, or malachite (green verditer), was the green most approved of by the ancients; there was also an artificial kind which was made from clay impregnated with sulphate of copper (blue vitriol) rendered green by a yellow dye. The commonest and cheapest colors were the Appianum, which was a clay, and the creta viridis, the common green earth ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... physical, it makes no matter. They always have their causes. There are causes for ambition, courage, veracity, just as there are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar." When we read such proclamations of the intellect bent on showing the existential conditions of absolutely everything, we feel—quite apart from our legitimate impatience at the somewhat ridiculous swagger ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... that slight chance of compromise. The weaker elements in convention were no match for the peaceful Puritan whom war might profit, but could not injure. Peace was pelted from under her olive with splinters of Plymouth Rock, and Massachusetts members poured upon the troubled waters oil—of vitriol! ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... of some of the bread of his allowance, with which he made a cup round the bottom of one of the bars of the window; into this cup he poured some of the contents of the little bottle, which was, I believe, oil of vitriol: in a little time, this made a bad smell, and it was then I found the use of the pipe and tobacco, for the smell of the tobacco quite bothered the smell of the vitriol. When he thought he had softened the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... he said. "Paring and clipping, and dipping the hoof in blue vitriol and vinegar, or rubbing it on, as the English shepherds do. It destroys the diseased part, ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... wealth of Baden is not great; but iron, coal, zinc and lead of excellent quality are produced, and silver, copper, gold, cobalt, vitriol and sulphur are obtained in small quantities. Peat is found in abundance, as well as gypsum, china-clay, potters' earth and salt. The mineral springs of Baden are very numerous and have acquired great celebrity, those of Baden-Baden, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... several editions followed it in England, France and Germany. But Nathaniel Highmore in his History of Generation (1651) referred to the concoction as "Talbot's Powder" some years before Digby took it up. The basis seems to have been vitriol, and it was claimed that it would heal a wound by simply being applied to a bandage taken ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... vast rounds of applause upon its author, and frightened its object into deep silence for the rest of his life, like the Quos ego of angry Neptune, sufficiently argues that the verses must have ploughed as deeply as the Russian knout. Vitriol could not scorch more fiercely. And yet the whole passage rests upon a blunder; and the blunder is so broad and palpable, that it implies instant forgetfulness both in the writer and the reader. The idea which furnishes the basis of the passage is this: that the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... assumptions and malignant insinuations of the supercilious bigots, who corruptly defended the truth:- were the impressive facts, the piercing outcries, the pathetic appeals, and the close and powerful reasoning with which the poor sufferer—smarting at once from his wounds, and from the oil of vitriol which the orthodox LIARS FOR GOD were dropping into them—impatiently, but uprightly and holily, controverted this truth, while in will and in spirit he clung to it;- -were both dictated by an infallible intelligence?—Alas! if I may judge from the manner in ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... coal-yards," he said, taking in the situation at a glance. "Caesar, let the coal-yards be your care. Alcibiades will take the Three Musketeers, and by night will make a detour to the other side of the palace and open the sluices of the vitriol reservoir, which I understand run into the Styx. Pompey will surprise the stokers in the national engine-room with a force of ten thousand, put out the fires, and await further orders. Charlemagne will accompany me with the ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... them with her beauty and her wine, flung them aside to make ready for the next comer. Too well had San Francisco merited the title I give it in the opening lines of this chapter. Some say that the earthquake and the fire came like vitriol cast on the features of a beautiful woman for the prostitution of her charms; but I, who lost little to her lures, am ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... poetical satires—"The Legion Club"—a satire so bitter and so scathing that reading it now, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, one shudders at its invective—"a blasting flood of filth and vitriol, out of some hellish fountain," Mr. Churton Collins calls it. We are told that its composition brought on a violent attack of vertigo, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... vomit what he had swallowed. Furious, and accusing me of a criminal intention, he returned to my quarters to demand an explanation. I examined the substance taken from the banana, and found that it was blue vitriol and corrosive sublimate. The presence of such substances in a banana was far from natural. I took other bunches of my supply, and found in several bananas the same poisons, which had been skillfully introduced under the skin. After some inquiries I found, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... has three streams, two wherof are not above one foot and a half distant from one another, and yet of so differing qualities, that whereas one of them is limpid, blewish, lukewarm, bubling, and holding Sal-armoniack, Ochra, Iron, Vitriol, {134} Allum, Sulphur, Niter, Orpiment, used against Epilepsie, bad Spleens, and the Wormes; the other is Ice-cold, turbid and whitish, much stronger in tast, and heavier than the former, holding much Orpiment, Salt, Iron, Niter, and some Sal-Armoniack, Allum and Vitriol; Of this all Birds, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty, thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt, sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon their wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... it a long time by that name, but had no idea that it was the same fluid as sulphuric acid. What resemblance or connection can there be between oil of vitriol and this acid? ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... the last lodgers,' says the younger flea. 'They drank vile spirits, their blood was turpentine with, I fear, a dash of vitriol. How they lived at all, I know not. I always had the headache in the morning. Here however,' and the juvenile looked steadfastly down upon the plain of flesh, the wide champaign beneath him—'here we have ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... but a gale would drive it away, and that lasted for hours and even for days. And then there was mustard gas, that penetrated everywhere through the clothing, through the skin, and that burned and ate up the living tissues like so much vitriol. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol. In appearance as plausible as the breakfast food of the angels, it is as hot in the mouth as ginger, increasing the pangs of the water-famished. It is a derivative from water, air, and some cold, uncanny fire from which the caloric has been extracted. Good has ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry

... asked him then for anything that had the blood upon it: so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith his hand was first bound; and, as I called for a basin of water, as if I would wash my hands, I took a handful of powder of vitriol, which I had in my study, and presently dissolved it. As soon as the bloody garter was brought me, I put it in the basin, observing, in the interim, what Mr. Howell did, who stood talking with a gentleman in a corner of my chamber, not regarding at all what I was doing. He started ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... are all of that staid middle age which begins early and lasts late in the profession. They are none of them famous, yet each is of good repute, and a fair type of his particular branch. The portly man with the authoritative manner and the white, vitriol splash upon his cheek is Charley Manson, chief of the Wormley Asylum, and author of the brilliant monograph—Obscure Nervous Lesions in the Unmarried. He always wears his collar high like that, since the half-successful attempt of a student of Revelations ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... social parasites, from the ill-got profits of their disreputable vocations. And her account of how, on the preceding Tuesday, she, single-handed, had robbed Sir Alexander McRae—who then enjoyed a fortune and an enviable reputation for philanthropy, thanks to the combination of glucose, vitriol and other chemicals which he prepared under the humorous pretext of manufacturing beer—wrung ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... was, in general, successfully treated by our author, with a decoction of "Chaerephyllum, Quinquefolium, Myrrhis, Rosae et Salvia;" in which was dissolved a "sat magna copia" of white vitriol.—A combination about as precise as some of the prescriptions which have been recommended to me, for the present disease, in this country. With this mixture, he touched the ulcers several times a day; and then washed them with a liniment of acetate ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... by experiment, that the extraneous matter previously dissolved by the heat in the mixture was not simply set at liberty to subside, but was detruded or pushed backward as the ice was produced. The experiment was this: about two ounces of a solution of blue vitriol were accidentally frozen in a thin phial, the glass was cracked and fallen to pieces, the ice was dissolved, and I found a pillar of blue vitriol standing erect on the bottom of the broken bottle. Nor is this ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... compound atom of cellulose. This cellulose is closely allied in composition to starch, dextrin, and a form of sugar called glucose. It is possible to convert cotton rags into this form of sugar—glucose—by treating first with strong vitriol or sulphuric acid, and then boiling with dilute acid for a long time. Before we leave these vegetable or cellulose fibres, I will give you a means of testing them, so as to enable you to distinguish them broadly from the animal fibres, amongst ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... in them.' 'Thunder and turf!' says I. 'What sa-ay?' says Phoebe. ''N' then old Mis' Barker come in last night. You know she's had consid'able experi'nce with eyes, her own having been weakly, and all her children's after her. And she said to try vitriol; but I kind o' thought I'd ask you first, Doctor, so I waited till morning. And now his eyes look terrible, and he seems dretful 'pindlin'; oh, dear me, what shall I do if my poor little Neddy goes blind?' 'Do, Madam?' I said. 'You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you and your ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... be painted in flames; the story of revenge may be recorded in vitriol; the story of carnage may be written in blood; but the story of the horrors that befell the Covenanted families, especially the delicate and helpless members of the household, must not be told. The manner in which fathers, husbands, and brothers ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... deposition. It might throw light on the character of the accused. Francoise had a dress hanging up to dry in the mansard. Helene went up to the garret above this, made a hole in the ceiling, and dropped oil of vitriol on her companion's dress ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... also afforded shelter from the inclemency of the weather, and to these precautions I imputed our having escaped the scurvy so long, though perhaps it was in some measure owing to the mixture of spirit of vitriol with the water that was thus preserved, our surgeon putting a small quantity into every cask when it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... Jim's eye and the blaze of wrath dulled to a gray contempt. She was afraid that he might call her what she had once overheard Pet Bettany call her—"A common little mucker." That sort of contempt seared like a splash of vitriol. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... dry and polished. White spots on varnished furniture may be removed by rubbing them with a warm flannel, dipped in spirits of turpentine. Ink spots may be removed by rubbing them with a woollen cloth, dipped in oil of vitriol and water mixed, being careful not to touch any part of the furniture that is not spotted. As soon as the ink is extracted, rinse the spot with pearl-ash water, and then with fair water. It is said that blotting paper alone ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... the telephone are everywhere, even on the summits of mountains and in mines a mile below the earth's surface. Electric power, if a waterfall furnishes the electricity, is the cheapest power known. The common blue vitriol is one form of copper, and to this we owe many of our electric conveniences. It is used in all wet batteries, and so it rings our doorbells for us. It also sprays our apple and peach trees, and is a very valuable article. Indeed, ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... days—so the Train had come swiftly, ten hours on the trail, and forced going. It was a volunteer infantry outfit, and apt to be a bit lawless in the sight of food. Some of the men began pulling at the packs. Healy and his iron-handed, vitriol-tongued crew beat them back with the ferocity of devils—and had the battalion cowed and whimpering, before the officers withdrew the men and arranged ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... heart good: now these Hillsborough hags haven't got a set of front teeth among 'em, young or old). Well, they told me the old gal's clothes could easily be spoiled, and her doll's face and all, with a penn'orth of vitriol." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Vitriol" :   battery acid, revilement, assail, vituperation, subject, blue vitriol, invective, atomic number 16, white vitriol, sulfur, zinc vitriol, sulfuric acid, snipe, round, contumely, attack



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