brimstone
nounEtymology
From Middle English brymston, brimston, bremston, forms of brinston, brenston, bernston, from Old English brynstān (“brimstone”, literally “burn-stone”), equivalent to burn + stone. Cognate with Scots brunstane (“brimstone”), Icelandic brennisteinn (“sulfur / sulphur, brimstone”), German Bernstein (“amber”). Compare also brimfire. More at burn, stone. Although once a synonym for sulfur, the word is now largely restricted to poetic and Biblical usage.
Definitions
The sulfur of hell
The sulfur of hell; hell, damnation.
- For griefe thereof, and diuelish despight, / From his infernall fournace forth he threw / Huge flames, that dimmed all the heauens light, / Enrold in duskish smoke and brimstone blew.
- Till, as a signal giv'n, th' uplifted Spear / Of their great Sultan waving to direct / Thir course, in even ballance down they light / On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain; / A multitude.
Sulfur.
- Weel I wot I wad be broken if I were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper and brimstone, and suchlike sweetmeats.
- Don't think, young man, that we go to the expense of flower of brimstone and molasses, just to purify them.
A whore.
- I went to the park, picked up a low Brimstone, called myself a Barber, & agreed with her for Sixpence, went to the bottom of the park, arm in arm, & dipped my machine in the Canal […].
›+ 3 more definitionsshow fewer
Used attributively as an intensifier in exclamations.
- You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!
- You're a brimstone idiot.
The butterfly Gonepteryx rhamni of the Pieridae family.
Online content of exceptionally poor quality, lower than coal.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for brimstone. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA