TARNISH • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Tarnish

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/tˈɑrnɪʃ/ Listen

verb

Tarnish v. t. (past & past part. tarnished; pres. part. tarnishing) To soil, or change the appearance of, especially by an alternation induced by the air, or by dust, or the like; to diminish, dull, or destroy the luster of; to sully; as, to tarnish a metal; to tarnish gilding; to tarnish the purity of color. "Tarnished lace." Used also figuratively; as, to tarnish one's honor.

Synonyms: To sully; stain; dim.

Tarnish v. i. To lose luster; to become dull; as, gilding will tarnish in a foul air. "Till thy fresh glories, which now shine so bright, Grow stale and tarnish with our daily sight."

noun

Tarnish n.

The quality or state of being tarnished; stain; soil; blemish.

(Min.) A thin film on the surface of a metal, usually due to a slight alteration of the original color; as, the steel tarnish in columbite.

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Etymology of 'Tarnish'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tarnish" Quotes from Famous Books

... looked rather awkward in being only whitewashed, and the same effected in rather the "olden time;" to remedy which fanciful inconvenience, on my return to Bristol, I sent an upholsterer[8] down to this retired and happy abode with a few pieces of sprightly paper, to tarnish the half ...

— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... the heart by this cold and grinning kindness as much as by the harshness of Keller or the coarse German banter of Nucingen. The familiarity of the man, and his grotesque gabble excited by champagne, seemed to tarnish the soul of the honest bourgeois as though he came from a house of financial ill-fame. He went down the stairway and found himself in the streets without knowing where he was going. As he walked along the boulevards and reached the Rue Saint-Denis, he recollected ...

— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... well to clean brass andirons, handles, &c. with vinegar. It makes them very clean at first; but they soon spot and tarnish. Rotten-stone and oil are proper materials for cleaning brasses. If wiped every morning with flannel and New England rum, they will not need to be ...

— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... gold; but of the jewel which it secures with hoops or ridges, (French, enchasser[O]). Then the armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of decoration that of flat inlaid enamel; and the silver-worker, finding that the raised filigree (still a staple at Genoa) only attracted tarnish, or got crushed, early sought to decorate a surface which would bear external friction, with labyrinths of ...

— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... naturalist. "I am indisposed to matrimony in general, and more especially to all admixture of the varieties of species, which only tend to tarnish the beauty and to interrupt the harmony of nature. Moreover, it is a painful innovation on the order ...

— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

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