This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Friday 18 October 2013

Word To Use Today: tincture.

[This post first appeared last Friday, but that was an accident.]

Tincture.

It sounds like the clink of a penny dropping into a collecting tin.

This is appropriate, as a tincture is a small amount, though it's not usually anything to do with money.

A tincture can be one of the colours on a heraldic shield (when I say colours I include white and yellow, even though strictly speaking in heraldry these aren't colours at all but metals).

This is the coat of arms of Peru.

A tincture can also be medicine mixed with alcohol (or, for British posh old people, the same thing but without the medicine). A tincture can mean a slight flavour, a mild scent, an almost invisible trace, or a slight colouring.

It can be a small amount of something intangible, too, like a hint of contempt in an eye or a tinge of doubt in a voice.

A tincture started off meaning dye or a pigment, but this meaning has now faded away like the pattern on an ancient carpet to leave hardly a trace of its existence behind.

Word To Use Today: tincture. This word comes from the Latin tinctura, dyeing, from tingere to dye or colour.

COMMENTS:

from Ed @ Lexicolatry:

You're absolutely right, Sally - tincture does sound exactly like a penny dropping into a metal bin. What a brilliant description.


From Jingles:

I'm neither British nor posh, but I do rather like that meaning! :)

From Sally:

Thanks, Ed and Jingles. Sorry about the technical blip that caused this post to do its Cheshire cat trick. If I knew what I'd done the first time I'd make sure I didn't do it again.
Ah well.











2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thank you for coming. It's a pleasure, very nearly always, Jingles, though scary when posts publish themselves before they've been properly edited.

      Delete

All comments are very welcome, but please make them suitable for The Word Den's family audience.