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scramoisie
Jun. 28th, 2013 07:10 amscramoisie (sca-MOY-zee) - adj., crimson.
Or so claimed Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in this annotation to William Bell Scott's "The Witch," where I met the word. Some digging around found that it's a Scotch variation on a word variously spelled cramoisie/cramoisi/cramoisy, which is also used as a noun to specifically mean crimson cloth, which would surely be the Scott's intended meaning. As cramoisy, the word dates back to around 1400, from either French cramoisi, earlier crameisi, from Spanish carmesí OR from Italian cremisi, both Spanish and Italian forms coming from Arabic qirmizī, from qirmiz, kermes, which we've seen before, a year or so ago -- being a Mediterranean insect that grows on an oak of the same name, used to make a crimson dye. Its name is from Persian, and is also the root (via Latin) of the word crimson.
---L.
Or so claimed Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in this annotation to William Bell Scott's "The Witch," where I met the word. Some digging around found that it's a Scotch variation on a word variously spelled cramoisie/cramoisi/cramoisy, which is also used as a noun to specifically mean crimson cloth, which would surely be the Scott's intended meaning. As cramoisy, the word dates back to around 1400, from either French cramoisi, earlier crameisi, from Spanish carmesí OR from Italian cremisi, both Spanish and Italian forms coming from Arabic qirmizī, from qirmiz, kermes, which we've seen before, a year or so ago -- being a Mediterranean insect that grows on an oak of the same name, used to make a crimson dye. Its name is from Persian, and is also the root (via Latin) of the word crimson.
---L.
