brune
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: brunes
Etymology: From French brune.
Senses: examples: text: This conclusion is dangerous in the extreme; for fashion, and the love of display are two of the most dangerous enemies to woman’s empire, By their imperious laws, the blond, and the brune, the blooming girl, the finished woman, and the widow un peu passee, are all compelled to wear the same livery, whether it be becoming or not.
ref: 1828 September 22, “Female Dress”, in The Opera Glass. Devoted to the Fine Arts, Literature, and the Drama., volume I, number 3, page 18, column 1:
text: Yes, I like Sunshine; it’s such fun to hear her talk. And you seem to like that dark-eyed sister of hers—eh, old boy? Well, she’s a very handsome girl, I grant you, but she’s too stately for me; besides, I don’t care for your brunes; tall women haven’t, generally, much fun in them.
ref: 1861, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], “Our Corps’ Friends and Foes; or, How Randolph Trapped a Sunbeam, and I Turned a Medium”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume XLIX, London: Chapman and Hall, […], section II (How Sunshine, Pearl, and Rosebud Shot at Bull’s-Eyes and Hit Other Marks), page 80:
text: “[…] I am curious really to know how you get up the steam fresh every time; now with a duchess, and now with a dairymaid, now with a blonde, and now with a brune!” […] he passed him in the vestibule, and went on to chat with the Comtesse de Chantal, a bewitching little brune, who had confided to him the colour of her adorable rose domino, and would quickly have been recognised without any other guide than her bright marmoset eyes. […] the Princess was a brune, an olive-cheeked daughter of Sardinia, and the delicate chin of the mask, which (save the rose lips) was all he could see of his clairvoyante unknown, was white as the skin of the fairest blonde. […] A bright-eyed brune is better than a brush any day, and two good things can’t spoil one another.
ref: 1865, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], Strathmore: A Romance […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 40–41, 99, 103, and 201:
text: This most superior-looking fabric does not possess one deterrent quality. By many ladies who prefer plain to fancy materials this will be much admired, and the colourings are all of those soft undecided tones, which are so eminently becoming to either blonde or brune.
ref: 1877 May 1, “Royal Poplin”, in Myra’s Journal of Dress and Needlework, volume III, number 5, London: Goubaud & Son […]:
text: And after all, we each one of us have personal experiences and personal preferences which bias our judgment in this respect; we love this man or that woman, and for the time we believe that just that style of beauty is the ideal we have always held. We haven’t, and by and by we shall smile at our own delusion and flatly contradict our fatuous theories; but while it lasts, and even perhaps in memory, we shall cling to the admiration of blonde or brune in general, because once in particular we loved a blonde or a brune. / Another point to be considered nowadays, however, is, what is her natural coloring? / For so many persons copy Queen Elizabeth, who had 100 wigs as well as 100 gowns, and wore whatever style of complexion she chose!
ref: 1896, Mrs. Frank Leslie [i.e., Miriam Leslie], “Angels Have Blonde Hair, but There Are Many Brunettes. The Two Types of Beauty.”, in Are We All Deceivers? The Lover’s Blue Book, London; New York, N.Y.: F[rank] Tennyson Neely, page 257:
text: In the same lovely colour is a vine-leaf berthe mingled with copper-pink sequins; and last, though not least, is an inlaid bolero, pure white and palest green, which would be most becoming to either blonde or brune.
ref: 1906, Truth, page 1278, column 1:
text: Oh! scold me, Pop, scold me and make me behave if ever again I bow the knee to a blonde or brune in Roch.
ref: 1907 June, George V[ere] Hobart, Ikey’s Letters to His Father, New York, N.Y.: G. W. Dillingham Company, page 53:
text: The competing goddesses were three, “golden” Aphrodite, “ox-eyed” Hera, and Athena, who was the very brain of Zeus until she outgrew her quarters. If Aphrodite deserves her epithet, she was a blonde. If Hera was ox-eyed, she was a brune (unless she was peroxide), for who ever heard of a blue-eyed ox? […] Paris may have been a shepherd, but he was the first gentleman, for with a blonde, a brune and a bluestocking come to judgment, he preferred the blonde. […] In The Broken Wedding Ring of Bertha M. Clay, the elder sister, Leah, is a brune, […] This leaves us free to infer that if she doesn’t show it so often as the brune, it is merely because she doesn’t have to. She has the delicate air by gift of nature, and if because of it we endow her not only with all worldly goods but all the graces of heaven, we do so at our own risk, not by the mandate of God. […] A check of many working-girl novels of the nineteenth century indicates that in every hundred heroines we have eighty blondes, ten brunes, and ten red-heads.
ref: 1936 November, Robert Palfrey Utter, Gwendolyn Bridges Needham, Pamela’s Daughters, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, pages 194, 204, 206, (The Lass with the Delicate Air) and 355 (Some Don’t):
glosses: A brunette.