SAPPHIRE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Sapphire

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/sˈæfaɪər/ Listen

noun

Sapphire n.

(Min.) Native alumina or aluminium sesquioxide, Al2O3; corundum; esp., the blue transparent variety of corundum, highly prized as a gem. "Of rubies, sapphires, and of pearlés white." Note: Sapphire occurs in hexagonal crystals and also in granular and massive forms. The name sapphire is usually restricted to the blue crystals, while the bright red crystals are called Oriental rubies (see under Ruby), the amethystine variety Oriental amethyst (see under Amethyst), and the dull massive varieties corundum (a name which is also used as a general term to include all varieties). See Corundum.

The color of the gem; bright blue.

(Zool.) Any humming bird of the genus Hylocharis, native of South America. The throat and breast are usually bright blue.

Star sapphire, or Asteriated sapphire (Min.), a kind of sapphire which exhibits asterism.

adjective

Sapphire adj. Of or resembling sapphire; sapphirine; blue. "The sapphire blaze."

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Etymology of 'Sapphire'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sapphire" Quotes from Famous Books

... impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces of Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire sea supported it, the transparent light illumined it, the lance-like mountains looked down upon it, and the glistening bergs forbore to crush it, as if disdaining to harm so fragile ...

— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... here the snowy crest of Lebanon, here the roadstead crowded with craft; here the mulberry groves. Here the sparkling sapphire sea; here the turf blazing with poppies; here the quiet pine road to Damascus; here the forests, excellent with cedars. Here the twisting unexpected streets. Here his own quiet house, with the courtyard and its fountain. Here the hum of the ...

— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... not made, or taught me, Lord, to care For times and seasons—but this one glad day Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights That flash in the girdle of the year so fair— When thou wast born a man, because alway Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights Of thought, and time, and ...

— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... straight fall of thy spotless virgin linen; bearing in thy hand the lily, and leaning thy cheek to it, where the human rose is softened to a milky bloom of red, the espousals of heaven with earth; over thee, moving with thee, a wreath of sapphire stars, and ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... opened again. September again colored the leaves of the old elms of Yule. The Blue Hills, as lovely as when the Northmen beheld them nearly nine hundred years ago, were radiant with the autumn tinges of foliage and sky, changing from turquoise to sapphire in the intense twilight, and to purple as the shades ...

— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

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