incarnadine
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪnˈkɑːnədiːn/
ipa: /-daɪn/
ipa: /-dɪn/
ipa: /ɪnˈkɑɹnəˌdiːn/
Forms: form: incarnadines
Etymology: The adjective is derived from French incarnadin, incarnadine, from Italian incarnadino, a variant of incarnatino (“carnation; flesh colour”), from incarnato (“embodied, incarnate”) + -ino (suffix forming adjectives denoting composition, colour, or other qualities). Incarnato is derived from Ecclesiastical Latin and Late Latin incarnātus (“having been made incarnate”), the perfect passive participle of incarnō (“to become or make incarnate; to make into flesh”), from in- (suffix meaning ‘in, inside, within’) + Latin carō (“flesh, meat; body”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs).
The noun and verb are derived from the adjective.
Adjective senses 2 and 3 (“of the blood-red colour of raw flesh; (figurative) bloostained, bloody”) and noun sense 2 (“blood-red colour of raw flesh”) are due to William Shakespeare’s use of the word as a verb in Macbeth (c. 1606): see the quotation below.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1735, [John Barrow], “[FLESH]”, in Dictionarium Polygraphicum: Or, The Whole Body of Arts Regularly Digested. […], volume I (A–H), London: […] C[harles] Hitch and C[harles] Davis […], and S[amuel] Austen […], →OCLC:
text: 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.
ref: 1994, Victor Hugo, “Lux Facta Est”, in Les Misérables (Wordsworth Classics), volume 1, Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, published 2002, →ISBN, part 3 (Marius), book 6 (The Conjunction of Two Stars), page 470:
text: 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.
ref: 2009, Elisabeth Wagner-Koch, Gerard Wagner, “The Motif of the Human Being”, in Peter Stebbing, transl., The Individuality of Colour: Contributions to a Methodical Schooling in Colour Experience, revised edition, Forest Row, West Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, →ISBN, page 108:
qualifier: originally
glosses: The pale pink or pale red colour of flesh; carnation.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1821, Lord Byron, Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice. An Historical Tragedy, in Five Acts. […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, Act IV, scene ii, page 119:
glosses: The blood-red colour of raw flesh; crimson.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2014, John Ransome Bentley, chapter 31, in The Royal Secret, [La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.]: Meadow Grove, published June 2015, →ISBN, page 147:
qualifier: generally
glosses: A red colour.