incarnadine

adj

1. (archaic, literary)Of the pale pink or pale red colour of flesh; carnation.

   “Incarnadine, or Incarnate, that is of a bright Carnation or Fleſh Colour, or of the Colour of a Damask-Roſe.”

2. (archaic, literary)Of the blood-red colour of raw flesh; crimson.

   “Wild and dishevelled, thy luxuriant hair / Falls scattered o'er thy throbbing bosom, fair / As snow incarnadine with morning's ray;— [...]”

   “The bandages on his hands – cerise and incarnadine, opalescent and viridian – were grotesqueries that only emphasised his stature.”

3. (archaic, figuratively, literary)Bloodstained, bloody.

   “His poem, however, is meetly enough entituled—Christ Crucified! But the Rev. William Ellis Wall is worse than [Pontius] Pilate. That "wretch," as this miserable calls the Roman governor, was careful to wash his hands of all guilt in the transaction; but the Rev. William Ellis Wall holds forth triumphantly his two unhallowed and incarnadine maniples of reeking digits, boasting of the infamous achievement in a most egregious preface.”

   “"Basically I am a very good person." This from the latest serial killer–destined for the chair, they say–who, with incarnadine axe, recently dispatched half a dozen registered nurses in Texas.”

4. (archaic, literary)Of a red colour.

   “Let the wine incarnadine, / In crystal goblets gleaming, / Be the sign, O muse divine, / Of golden moments teeming.”

   “Green orchards with ripe fruit incarnadine, / Each several member autumn-canopied / So thickly as to bend beneath its freight, [...]”

   “The chaplain glanced at the bridge table that served as his desk and saw only the abominable orange-red, pear-shaped, plum tomato he had obtained that same morning from Colonel Cathcart, still lying on its side where he had forgotten it like an indestructible and incarnadine symbol of his own ineptitude.”

   “I'd like to call attention to one last element of this page. [Charlotte] Salomon's insignia, here incarnadine and enclosed in a circle, like a wax seal, elsewhere floating on the lower left hand side of the page.”

noun

1. (archaic, countable, literary, uncountable)The pale pink or pale red colour of flesh; carnation.

   “To dye SILK FLESH colour or INCARNADINE. For every pound of ſilk, put in a quarter of a pound of Braſil; boil it, ſtrain it through a ſieve, and pour freſh cold water upon it.”

   “The woman whom he now saw was a noble, beautiful creature, [...] Beautiful chestnut hair, shaded with veins of gold, a brow which seemed chiselled marble, cheeks which seemed made of roses, a pale incarnadine, a flushed whiteness, an exquisite mouth, whence came a smile like the gleam of sunshine, and a voice like music, a head which Raphael would have given to Mary, on a neck which Jean Goujon would have given to Venus.”

   “Incarnadine – this remarkable colour of the human skin – how does it arise in painting? [...] Painting what transpires within the soul, it becomes external image: incarnadine, and the colours that surround the head or the human figure.”

2. (archaic, countable, literary, uncountable)The blood-red colour of raw flesh; crimson.

   “Now thou [the sea] must wear an unmix'd crimson; no / Barbaric blood can reconcile us now / Unto that horrible incarnadine, / But friend or foe will roll in civic slaughter.”

3. (archaic, countable, literary, uncountable)A red colour.

   “Now sixty-eight years of age she [Elizabeth I] has chosen for the occasion of a dance in her honor a long flowing velvet gown of incarnadine red.”

verb

1. (archaic, literary, transitive)To make flesh-coloured.

   “[T]he clouds, till that time thick in the sky, broke away from the upper heaven, and allowed the noonday sun to pour down through the lantern upon her, irradiating her with a warm light that was incarnadined by her pink doublet and hose, and reflected in upon her face.”

2. (also, archaic, figuratively, literary, transitive)To make red, especially blood-coloured or crimson; to redden.

   “Will all great Neptunes ocean waſh this blood / Cleane from my Hand? no: this my Hand will rather / The multitudinous Seas incarnardine, / Making the Greene one, Red.”

   “Virgins of equall birth, [...] / Shall draw thy picture, and record thy life; / One ſhall enſphere thine eyes, another ſhall / Impearl thy teeth[,] a third thy white and ſmall / Hand ſhall beſnow, a fourth incarnadine / Thy roſie cheek, [...]”

   “[H]e dies. / His wife her cheeks rends inconſolable, / His babes are fatherleſs, his blood the glebe / Incarnadines, and where he bleeds and rots / More birds of prey than women haunt the place.”

   “And he, who turn'd the waters into blood, / Shall next incarnadine these desart sands, / Whilst dogs and vultures hunt us on the track.”