incarnadine
Americanadjective
-
blood-red; crimson.
-
flesh-colored; pale pink.
noun
verb (used with object)
verb
adjective
Etymology
Origin of incarnadine
1585–95; < Middle French, feminine of incarnadin flesh-colored < Italian incarnatino, equivalent to incarnat ( o ) made flesh ( see incarnate) + -ino -ine 1; see carnation
Explanation
The verb incarnadine literally means "to make the color of flesh," although it's more commonly used to mean "to redden." The first use of incarnadine as a verb is in Shakespeare's Macbeth, when Macbeth talks about the blood on his hands in Act 2, Scene 2. He says, "Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red." Macbeth means that there is not enough water in the sea to cleanse his hands, but instead the blood on them will stain the ocean red.
Vocabulary lists containing incarnadine
Body Language: Carn ("Flesh")
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"The Tragedy of Macbeth," Vocabulary from Act 2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The result bore an uncanny resemblance to ham: the surface dark, the interior incarnadine, the flesh easy to cut into meaty slices.
From New York Times ● Aug. 24, 2020
The word "incarnadine", for example is much touted as a Shakespeare coinage, but did it really catch on?
From The Guardian ● Jul. 23, 2010
Just inside the entrance, the incarnadine exclamation of a Poiret dress laps a female figure like ripples on a lakeshore.
From Time Magazine Archive
Last week a suppressed flair for a style more incarnadine and virile apparently overcame him.
From Time Magazine Archive
Nightingale cries to the Rose That yellow Cheek of her's to incarnadine.
From The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam by Khayyam, Omar
That mouth has been incarnadined in the deepest red, so it seems to have an autonomous life that’s at odds with the cool, pale skin that surrounds it.
From New York Times ● Mar. 8, 2019
The Dunmore, rigged and coursed with smoke like some spirit vessel, cast volleys of flame through its entanglements of cloud, and all its gray was incarnadined with fire.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
The ruby my vow desires For your beauty smiling kind Is surely incarnadined By a limpid mirror's fires.
From Contemporary Belgian Poetry Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell by Various
Instantly quenched: distress and affronted modesty incarnadined her face, veiled her eyes.
From Joan Thursday by Vance, Louis Joseph
It overspread his high, bald, intellectual forehead, and incarnadined his sconce up to the very top of it.
From Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment 1898 by Bellamy, Edward
Oh, more than ever, now I sometimes think no poetry is read Save where some sepultured Caesura bled, Royally incarnadining all the line.
From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke by Brooke, Rupert
The hateful stream continued to pump forth from the cut, incarnadining the muddy road, and in despair she took Pilot by the head and began to lead him down the hill towards the valley.
From All on the Irish Shore Irish Sketches by Somerville, E. Oe. (Edith Oenone)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
