Scheele's green

noun

1. copper arsenite used as a pigment, especially in paints.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Scheele's green¹

First recorded in 1810–20; named after K.W. Scheele

Example Sentences

Victorian-era publishers used arsenic to colour book bindings, in pigments such as Paris Green, Emerald Green and Scheele's Green, named after a German-born chemist.

From BBC

And in the Victorian period, some publishers used binding cloth dyed with colors like Scheele’s green, an industrially produced hue also containing arsenic.

From New York Times

There is the copper-arsenite Scheele’s Green, synthesized at the beginning of the nineteenth century and more dazzling than traditional verdigris, the green-blue patina given off by corroded copper.

From The New Yorker

Inorganic compounds such as copper arsenite, also called Scheele’s green, lent a coveted hue to some wallpapers and paints.

From Washington Post

One of those paints, Scheele’s Green, invented in Sweden in the 1770s, is thought by some historians to have killed Napoleon Bonaparte in 1821, when lethal arsenic fumes were released from the rotting green and gold wallpaper in his damp cell on the island of Saint Helena.

From New York Times