limn
Part of speech: verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English limnen, limyne, lymm, lymn, lymne (“to illuminate (a manuscript)”), a variant of luminen (“to illuminate (a manuscript)”), short form of enluminen (“to shed light on, illuminate; to enlighten; to make bright or clear; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript); to depict, describe; to adorn or embellish with figures of speech or poetry; to make famous, glorious, or illustrious”), from Old French enluminer (“to brighten, light up; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript)”), from Latin illūminō (“to brighten, light up; to adorn; to make conspicuous”), from il- (a variant of in- (prefix meaning ‘in, inside’)) + lūminō (“to brighten, illuminate; to reveal”) (from lūmen (“light; (poetic) brightness”) (from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright; to shine; to see”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)).
Inflected forms:
form: limns
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: limning
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: limned
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: limned
pos: verb
tags: past
form: limne
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: To draw or paint; to delineate.
pos: verb
tags: also
figuratively
transitive
examples: Who then to frail Mortality ſhall truſt, / But limns in Water, or but writes in Duſt.
Then the Painter, according to the pattern of ſome living thing, portraieth [draweth out] the picture groſly; afterward he reſembleth it to the life, and with his pencil limneth it with different painting colors.
Read books which are in french and Latin, for so you may retain and increase your knowledge in Latin: some times draw and limn and practise perspective.
Thou limnest well, / Were I to paint, I should shew you happy.
This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud / Of his soul writ and limned; […]
[S]he laughs—in golden tones; she sleeps—like a fragrant lily; she dresses—limning her eyebrows like those of the silkworm moth.
As he looked up at the rim of the hole, faintly limned in the moonlight, he mused that this searching feeling of his was perhaps jealousy.
In telling these people's stories Mr. [Robert Olen] Butler draws upon the same gifts of empathy and insight, the same ability to limn an entire life in a couple of pages, […]
And in her mind's eye, Roland had been exactly such a man as this—tall, dark, foreboding even, with a strong jaw that bespoke a character worth knowing, and intelligence agleam in his eyes. As if to reaffirm her imagination, the sun broke through the trees to limn his broad shoulders with gold.
Still, though their terminology changed and their analysis developed, the model is limned fairly clearly as early as 1845–46, in the co-written The German Ideology.
gloss: To illuminate, as a manuscript; to decorate with gold or some other bright colour.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: Some of her [Elizabeth Barton's] Revelations were no better than ſilly Tales: Such was a certain Tale of Mary Magdalen, delivering her a Letter from Heaven, that was limned with golden Letters: which indeed was written by a Monk of St. Auguſtines, Canterbury: and another at Calais.
Derived words: dislimn
enlimn
limner
limning
outlimn
relimn
unlimned
Translations:
lang: French
word: peindre