grass-green, a. (and n.)
(Stress variable.)
[Cf. MDu. grasgroene (Du. grasgroen), MHG. grasgrüene (G. grasgrün), ON. grasgr{obar}nn (Da. græsgr{obar}n, Sw. gräsgrön).]
1. Green as grass; having the colour of grass.
| a 700 Epinal Gloss. 298 Carpassini, gresgro[e]ni. 13.. K. Alis. 299 Mercury he made gras-grene. a 1593 Marlowe Jew of Malta i. (1633) B 2, Iacints, hard Topas, grasse-greene Emeraulds. 1641 French Distill. vi. (1651) 193 There will remaine..a grasse-green Liquor. 1812 Sir H. Davy Chem. Philos. 424 Oxide of nickel is employed to give colours to enamels and porcelain; in different mixtures it produces brown red, and grass green tints. 1842 Tennyson Sir Launcelot & Q. Guinevere 24 A gown of grass-green silk she wore. 1884–5 Riverside Nat. Hist. (1888) III. 369 Tragops prasinus..is a beautiful grass-green animal, living in the jungles of India. |
b. quasi-n. and n. (the adj. used absol.).
| 1657 R. Ligon Barbadoes (1673) 83 All sorts of yellows, with their shadows intermixt with grass greens. 1696 Bp. Patrick Comm. Exod. xxviii. (1697) 542 The colour of it is a Grass-green; wonderfully refreshing. 1792 C. Smith Desmond III. 120 Lined with sky blue, or grass green. 1843 Portlock Geol. 513 A..light oil-green colour, occasionally grass-green, and passing into bottle-green. |
2. Green with grass.
| 1602 Shakes. Ham. iv. v. 31 At his head a grasse-greene Turfe. 1742 Shenstone Schoolmistress 273 When my bones in grass-green sods are laid. 1767 F. Fawkes Idyll. Theocritus xiii. 32 And grass-green meads pronounc'd the summer near. 1830 Tennyson Circumstance 6 Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower. |