# brimstone
## English
### Etymology

From Middle English brymston, brimston, bremston, forms of brinston, brenston, bernston, from Old English brynstān (“brimstone”, literally “burn-stone”), equivalent to brian +‎ stone, or burn +‎ stone. Cognate with Scots brunstane (“brimstone”), Icelandic brennisteinn (“sulfur / sulphur, brimstone”), German Bernstein (“amber”). Compare also brimfire. More at burn, stone.
Once a synonym for "sulfur", the word is now restricted to Biblical usage.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈbɹɪmstəʊn/
* (General American) IPA: /ˈbɹɪmstoʊn/
* (obsolete) IPA: /ˈbɹɪmstən/
* Audio (US):(file)

### Noun

brimstone (countable and uncountable, plural brimstones)
* The sulfur of Hell; Hell, damnation.
** 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene:For griefe thereof, and diuelish despight, / From his infernall fournace forth he threw / Huge flames, that dimmed all the heauens light, / Enrold in duskish smoke and brimstone blew.
** 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost:Till, as a signal giv'n, th' uplifted Spear / Of their great Sultan waving to direct / Thir course, in even ballance down they light / On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain; / A multitude.
** 1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times:[W]hen he [the Devil] is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss [...]
** 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a substance which is specially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury.
* (archaic) sulfur.
** 1816, Walter Scott, The Antiquary:Weel I wot I wad be broken if I were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper and brimstone, and suchlike sweetmeats.
** 1838, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby:Don't think, young man, that we go to the expense of flower of brimstone and molasses, just to purify them.
* (obsolete) A whore.
** 1763, James Boswell, edited by Gordon Turnbull, London Journal 1762-1763, Penguin, published 2014, page 237:I went to the park, picked up a low Brimstone, called myself a Barber, & agreed with her for Sixpence, went to the bottom of the park, arm in arm, & dipped my machine in the Canal […].
* (archaic) Used attributively as an intensifier in exclamations.
** 1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House:You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!
** 1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House:You're a brimstone idiot.
** 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:I made a speaking trumpet of my hands and commenced to whoop “Ahoy!” and “Hello!” at the top of my lungs. […] The Colonel woke up, and, after asking what in brimstone was the matter, opened his mouth and roared “Hi!” and “Hello!” like the bull of Bashan.
* The butterfly Gonepteryx rhamni of the Pieridae family.

#### Derived terms

* brimstone flower
* brimstone match
* brimstonewort
* brimstony
* fire and brimstone
* rain fire and brimstone

#### Translations
### References

* ↑ Jespersen, Otto (1909) A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (Sammlung germanischer Elementar- und Handbücher; 9)‎, volumes I: Sounds and Spellings, London: George Allen & Unwin, published 1961, § 4.412, page 128.

### Anagrams

* strombine