amber
Part of speech: noun
adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: biochemistry
biology
chemistry
genetics
medicine
microbiology
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
Etymology: From Middle English ambre, aumbre, from Old French aumbre, ambre, from Arabic عَنْبَر (ʕanbar, “ambergris”), from Middle Persian 𐭠𐭭𐭡𐭫 (ʾnbl /⁠ambar⁠/, “ambergris”). Compare English lamber, ambergris. Displaced Middle English smulting (from Old English smelting (“amber”)), Old English eolhsand (“amber”), Old English glær (“amber”), and Old English sāp (“amber, resin, pomade”).
* The nucleotide sequence "UAG" is named "amber" for the first person to isolate the amber mutation, California Institute of Technology graduate student Harris Bernstein, whose last name ("Bernstein") is the German word for the resin "amber".
Inflected forms:
form: ambers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: more amber
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most amber
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: Ambre is hote and drye […] Some say that it is the sparme of a whale.
As for Amber Grice, or Amber Cane, which ist most sweet myngled with other sweete thynges: some say it commeth from the rocks of the Sea. […] Some say it is gotten by a fish called Azelum, which feedeth upon Amber Grece, and dyeth, which is taken by cunnyng fishers and the belly opened, and this precious Amber found in hym.
The head of this fish is as hard as stone. The inhabitants of the Ocean sea coast affirme that this fish casteth foorth Amber; but whether the said Amber be the sperma or the excrement thereof, they cannot well determine.
Slaves […] with silver Censors […] perfum'd the air with Amber, Aloes wood, and other Scents.
gloss: Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: The leaves of the foreſt were loaded with manna, pure amber dropped from every bough, honey diſtilled from the rifted rock, and the humming bee, drunk with joy, ſtrayed from flower to flower, forgetful of his burſting cells.
gloss: A hard, generally yellow to brown translucent or transparent fossil resin from extinct coniferous trees of the pine genus, used for jewellery, decoration and later dissolved as a binder in varnishes. One variety, blue amber, appears blue rather than yellow under direct sunlight.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: With scarfs and fans and double change of bravery,
With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery.
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit.
To shew this by example, we reade of Sabina Poppcea, to whom nothing was wanting, but shame and honestie, being extremely beloved of Nero, had the colour of her haire yellow, like Amber, which Nero esteemed much of, […] .
Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are […]. (Common gem materials not addressed in this article include amber, amethyst, chalcedony, garnet, lazurite, malachite, opals, peridot, rhodonite, spinel, tourmaline, turquoise and zircon.)
gloss: A yellow-orange colour.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.
gloss: The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, which when illuminated indicates that drivers should stop when safe to do so. See also yellow light.
pos: noun
tags: Australia
Commonwealth
UK
countable
uncountable
examples: While earlier controllers provided concurrent ambers, present practice is to indicate a minimum intergreen period of 4 s.
Also flashing ambers are not operational at this type of crossing.
>Problem: Red-red signals are too time consuming when traffic density is higher.
I don't find them time consuming at all. I find them identical to ambers.
gloss: The stop codon (nucleotide triplet) "UAG", or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: an amber codon, an amber mutation, an amber suppressor
For example, to cross a temperature-sensitive mutation with an amber mutation, amber suppressor cells are infected at the low (permissive) temperature.
Double ambers revert at 10⁻⁸−10⁻⁹, and therefore, reversion is negligible. Double-amber mutants are made by crossing single-amber mutants with each other.
gloss: Hesitance to proceed, or limited approval to proceed; an amber light.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: […] in response to the actions I just described, business was given the green light, and now we seem to be on amber.
gloss: Of a brownish yellow colour, like that of most amber.
pos: adj
examples: They all moved safely through the first green and then the second, but when the third light turned amber Jack's taxi was the last to cross the intersection.
Ahead, a cool breeze swept the pale morning sun across a grassy meadow turned amber by morning's frost.
Synonyms: ambergris
Antonyms: red
green
Related words: ambergris
ambrette
liquidambar
pomander
yellowhammer
copal
Derived words: acid of amber
ambeer
Amber
amber alert
ambered
amberfish
amber fluid
amber forest cockroach
amber gambler
amber-greace
amber greace
amber-grease
amber grease
amber-grece
amber grece
amber greece
amber-greece
amber-greese
amber-grese
amber grese
amber grice
amber-grice
amber-griece
amber griece
amber-griese
amber griese
amber gris
amber-gris
amber grise
amber-grise
amberiferous
ambering
amberish
amberjack
amberlike
amber liquid
amber nectar
amberoid
amberous
amber pudding
amber seed
ambersnail
amber tree
amberware
amber wine
amber wood cockroach
ambery
ambrite
black amber
gray amber
grey amber
preserved in amber
salt of amber
sweet-amber
Translations: