21 October 2018

cinnabar

[sin-uh-bahr]

noun

1. a mineral, mercuric sulfide, HgS, occurring in red crystals or masses: the principal ore of mercury.
2. red mercuric sulfide, used as a pigment.
3. bright red; vermillion.

Origin of cinnabar

Middle English Latin Greek

1350-1400; Latin cinnabaris < Greek kinnábari?; replacing Middle English cynoper < Medieval Latin, Latin as above

Related forms

cinnabarine [sin-uh-buh-reen, -ber-in, -bahr-ahyn, -een] (Show IPA), cinnabaric [sin-uh-bar-ik], adjective

Dictionary.com

Examples from the Web for cinnabar

Historical Examples

Only one deposit of cinnabar has so far been discovered, that was in 1867.
British Borneo
W. H. Treacher

For I have seen the Roof-ridge red in the sunlight as if it were painted with cinnabar.
The House of the Wolfings
William Morris

Them men as works in cinnabar sooner or later gets salviated.
Mrs. Skaggs’s Husbands and Other Stories
Bret Harte

cinnabar is an object which constrains us to think it as heavy and red.
A Commentary to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
Norman Kemp Smith

Anagram

ran cabin
a crab inn

Today’s quote

There’s no geographical solution to an emotional problem.

– Tony Soprano (Played by James Gandolfini, The Sopranos Season 6, Part 2, episode 4)

On this day

21 October 1492 – Christopher Columbus discovers America.

21 October 1772 – birth of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet. Died 25 July 1834.

21 October 1833 – birth of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Swedish chemist and armaments manufacturer, inventor of dynamite and the Nobel Prizes. Was known as the ‘Merchant of Death’. A newspaper stated that he ‘became rich by finding ways to kill people faster than ever before‘. As a result, he decided to leave a better legacy than that and used his estate to establish and fund the Nobel Prizes, which included the Nobel Peace Prize. Died 10 December 1896.

21 October 1966 – The Aberfan disaster in which the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, killed 116 children and 28 adults.

21 October 1967 – Thousands of anti-Vietnam-war protestors attempt to storm the Pentagon.

21 October 1969 – death of Jack Kerouac, American beat-generation writer, ‘On the road‘. Born 12 March 1922.

21 October 2015 – Back to the Future Day. At 4.29pm on 21 October 2015, Doc Emmett Brown and Marty McFly arrived from the year 1955 in a time machine made from a Delorean in the hit 1989 film, Back to the Future 2. Apart from the time machine, the most famous invention featured in the movie was the hoverboard.