sapphirine

American  

[saf-er-in, -uh-reen, -uh-rahyn] / ˈsæf ər ɪn, -əˌrin, -əˌraɪn /

adjective

1. consisting of sapphire; like sapphire, especially in color.

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noun

1. a pale-blue or greenish, usually granular mineral, a silicate of magnesium and aluminum.

2. a blue variety of spinel.

sapphirine British  

/ ˈsæfəˌriːn, -rɪn /

noun

1. a rare blue or bluish-green mineral that consists of magnesium aluminium silicate in monoclinic crystalline form and occurs as small grains in some metamorphic rocks

2. a blue variety of spinel

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adjective

1. relating to or resembling sapphire

Etymology

Origin of sapphirine

1375–1425; late Middle English saphyryn (< Old French ) ≪ Greek sappheírinos like lapis lazuli ( see sapphire, -ine ¹); sapphirine ( def. 2 ) < German Saphirin ≪ Greek, as above

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sapphirine

Soft as swan's down, brood o'er the sapphirine Breadth of still shadowy waters dark as wine; Smooth out the liquid heavens that stars illume!

From The Home Book of Verse — Volume 3 by Stevenson, Burton Egbert

Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine air Teems with them even to the gleaming ends Of the wild day-spring! 

From The Song of the Sword and Other Verses by Henley, William Ernest

Outside even in Oxford Street the air was full of summer, and the cool people sauntering under the sapphirine sky were as welcome to his vision as if he had waked from a fever.

From Sinister Street, vol. 2 by MacKenzie, Compton

A quick arrested expression in her two sapphirine eyes, accompanied by a little, a very little, blush which loitered long, was all the outward disturbance that the sight of her lover caused.

From A Laodicean : a Story of To-day by Hardy, Thomas

Her sapphirine eyes searched the Berkshire hills again, "Something bigger and nobler—something which meant the entire sacrifice of self."

From The House of Mystery An Episode in the Career of Rosalie Le Grange, Clairvoyant by Irwin, Will