polverine

English

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for polverine in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Noun

polverine (countable and uncountable, plural polverines)

  1. (uncountable) Glassmaker's ashes; a kind of potash or pearlash, brought from the Levant and Syria, used in the manufacture of fine glass.
  2. (countable) A tiny stinging insect found in South America.
    • 1946, Kenneth Walker, I talk of dreams: an experiment in autobiography, page 145:
      Mosquitoes and polverines, little midges so small as to be scarcely visible, rose in a cloud from the water and settled on our hands and faces.
    • 1980, David Attenborough, The Zoo Quest Expeditions: Travels in Guyana, Indonesia, and Paraguay, →ISBN:
      The polverines, however, were so small and numerous that even though we massacred fifty with a slap it seemed to make no difference to the hazy black cloud which hung around our heads.
    • 1991, MS Aufdemberge, The Mission Efforts of the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Synod in the Chaco Province of Argentina:
      But all were more tolerable than those polverines.

References

  • polverine in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Italian

Noun

polverine f

  1. plural of polverina

Anagrams

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