CINNABAR • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Cinnabar

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/sˈɪnəbˌɑr/ Listen

noun

Cinnabar n.

(Min.) Red sulphide of mercury, occurring in brilliant red crystals, and also in red or brown amorphous masses. It is used in medicine.

The artificial red sulphide of mercury used as a pigment; vermilion.

Cinnabar Graecorum. (Med.) Same as Dragon's blood.

Green cinnabar, a green pigment consisting of the oxides of cobalt and zinc subjected to the action of fire.

Hepatic cinnabar (Min.), an impure cinnabar of a liver-brown color and submetallic luster.

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Etymology of 'Cinnabar'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cinnabar" Quotes from Famous Books

... 280. Cinnabar, HgS, is practically the only source of mercury— quicksilver. Austria, Spain, and California contain nearly all the mines. In these mines the metal also occurs native to a small extent. It is ...

— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... admirable impresario. The spectacles he gave were unique. At one which was held in the Taurian amphitheatre it must have been delightful to assist. Fancy eighty thousand people on ascending galleries, protected from the sun by a canopy of spangled silk; an arena three acres large carpeted with sand, cinnabar and borax, and in that arena death in every form, on those ...

— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... of January I was in my cabin looking through the window, and up through the Cinnabar Basin, over the snow-covered mountains. As I was looking, I saw a dark patch disappear in the snow and then rise out of it again. The snow was deep and fluffy. The animal that I was watching would disappear in the snow with a plunge, and then would come up with a jump. It made several ...

— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... walking on through the forest, when one of our hunters made a sign to us to stop, and he advanced cautiously. We saw him raise his bow and let fly an arrow. Down fell a small bird rather larger than a thrush, the plumage as we saw it falling being of the most intense cinnabar red with the softest and most lovely gloss. Mr Hooker ran forward in the greatest state of agitation I had ever seen him exhibit, and kneeling down, gradually lifted up the bird. Had he discovered a nugget of gold of the same size, he could not have appeared ...

— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... sculptor's atelier, etc.) have revealed to us some of the processes of the ancient artists. We know, for instance, that those of Pompeii employed mineral substances almost exclusively in the preparation of their colors; among them chalk, ochre, cinnabar, minium, etc. The vegetable kingdom furnished them nothing but lamp-black, and the animal kingdom their purple. The colors mixed with rosin have occasioned the belief that encaustic was the process used by the ancients in their mural paintings, an opinion keenly combatted ...

— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

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