Thursday, January 1, 2009

Saffron

v. "To saffron" is now rare usage but was once used to denote the color yellow applied to something or to dye with saffron, in a figurative sense. • "And in Latyn I speke a wordes fewe, To saffron with my predicacion." (i.e., he will season his public utterings with Latin) The Pardoner's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer. • "In the saffroned bridesails scenting all the seas" which is the last line of the poem 'The Second Voyage' by Rudyard Kipling, from the collection The Five Nations.

This definition is adapted from a footnote in The Poison Tree: Selected Writings of Rumphius on the Natural History of the Indies, edited and translated by E. M. Beekman. From here it's not so far to the imagined dictionary, the extended words and their definitions, that Sid Gershgoren has gathered.

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