ambergris
(ˈæmbəgriːs)
Forms: 5 imbergres, 6 ambar-, -ber-gris(e, amber-de-grece, 6–8 amber-greece, 7 amber-greice, ambre-gris, ambragresia, 7–8 ambergrise, -griese, -greese, 7–9 ambergrease, 7– ambergris. Also 7 greece of amber, gris-amber.
[a. Fr. ambre gris, ‘gray amber,’ as sometimes transl. To this substance the name amber originally belonged; after its extension to the resin, ambre jaune or succin, the amber proper was distinguished as ambre gris, which has become in Eng. its regular name. The spelling variants are due to attempts to explain gris, as grease, Greece (usual in 17th c.), etc.]
A wax-like substance of marbled ashy colour, found floating in tropical seas, and as a morbid secretion in the intestines of the sperm-whale. It is odoriferous and used in perfumery; formerly in cookery.
| 1481–90 Howard Househ. Bks. (1841) 202 Imber-gres j. lb. price xij. d. 1533 Elyot Cast. Helth (1541) 68 Confortatives of the Harte hotte..Ambergrise, etc. 1542 Boorde Dyetary viii. (1870) 249 Perfumed with amber-degrece. 1576 Baker Gesner's Jewell of Health 85/1 Adde both musk and amber greece. 1604 Dekker Honest Wh. 49 He smells all of Muske and Amber greece. 1612 Drayton Poly-olb. xx. (1748) 337 Their lips they sweet'ned had with costly ambergrease. 1614 W. Barclay in James I's Counterbl. (Arb.) 116 Is not Amber⁓greese coastly? 1616 R. C. Times' Whistle iii. 978 His beard, perfumde with greece of amber. 1624 B. Jonson Neptune's Triumph, Why do you smell of amber-grise, Of which was formed Neptune's niece? 1654 Lestrange Charles I, 136 They perfumed this respect with presenting to [their Majesties] a massive piece of Ambre Gris. 1657 S. Colvil Whigs Suppl. (1751) 36 Why devils music do not please? What sort of thing is Ambergrease? 1662 H. Stubbe Ind. Nectar iii. 45 Spicery (under which I comprise Amber-griese, and Musk). 1671 Milton P.R. ii. 341 In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Gris-amber-steam'd. 1673 Phil. Trans. VIII. 6115 Amber-Greece is not the Scum or Excrement of the Whale, etc. 1680 Morden Geog. Rect. (1685) 407 There is also found..Amber-greice. 1687 Sedley Bellam. iv. i, Breakfast..upon new laid eggs, ambergrease and gravy. 1711 Shaftesbury Charac. (1737) III. 207 Some wonderful rich dainty, richer than amber-greese. 1712 tr. Pomet's Hist. Drugs I. 19 Everybody now rejects Musk and Ambergriese. 1713 Derham Physico-Theol. iv. iv. 138 A piece of Amber⁓greece suspended in a pair of scales, lost nothing of its weight in 3½ days. c 1720 Pope in Swift's Wks. (1841) I. 837 Praise is like ambergris; a little whiff of it, by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to his nose, it is a stink and strikes you down. 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. II. 228 Discovering the manner of preparing ambergrease. 1783 Phil. Trans. LXXIII. 226 Ambergrise, or properly speaking Grey Amber, is a solid, opaque, inflammable substance. 1791 Ibid. LXXXI. 47, I think amber⁓gris most likely to be found in a sickly fish. 1849 Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. 442 Something had been put into his [Chas. II] favourite dish of eggs and ambergrease. 1874 Hartwig Aerial W. ii. 24 Some papers perfumed with a grain of amber⁓gris still retained a strong odour after 40 years. |