brimstone
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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Etymology
From Middle English brymston, brimston, bremston, forms of brinston, brenston, bernston, from Old English brynstān (“brimstone”, literally “burn-stone”), equivalent to brian + stone, or burn + stone. Cognate with Scots brunstane (“brimstone”), Icelandic brennisteinn (“sulfur / sulphur, brimstone”), German Bernstein (“amber”). Compare also brimfire. More at burn, stone.
Once a synonym for "sulfur", the word is now restricted to Biblical usage.
Pronunciation
Noun
brimstone (countable and uncountable, plural brimstones)
- The sulfur of Hell; Hell, damnation.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene:
- 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.
- 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost:
- 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.
- 1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times:
- [W]hen he [the Devil] is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss [...]
- 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
- But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a substance which is specially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury.
- (archaic) sulfur.
- 1816, Walter Scott, The Antiquary:
- 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.
- 1838, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby:
- Don't think, young man, that we go to the expense of flower of brimstone and molasses, just to purify them.
- (obsolete) A whore.
- 1763, James Boswell, edited by Gordon Turnbull, London Journal 1762-1763, Penguin, published 2014, page 237:
- 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 […].
- (archaic) Used attributively as an intensifier in exclamations.
- 1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House:
- You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!
- 1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House:
- You're a brimstone idiot.
- 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
- I made a speaking trumpet of my hands and commenced to whoop “Ahoy!” and “Hello!” at the top of my lungs. […] The Colonel woke up, and, after asking what in brimstone was the matter, opened his mouth and roared “Hi!” and “Hello!” like the bull of Bashan.
- The butterfly Gonepteryx rhamni of the Pieridae family.
- (Internet slang, soyjak.party slang) Internet content of exceptionally low quality; coal.
- Antonym: gem
Derived terms
- brimstone flower
- brimstone match
- brimstonewort
- brimstony
- fire and brimstone
- rain fire and brimstone
Translations
sulfur — see sulfur
the sulfur of Hell
intensifier in exclamations
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butterfly species
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References
- Jespersen, Otto (1909) A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (Sammlung germanischer Elementar- und Handbücher; 9), volumes I: Sounds and Spellings, London: George Allen & Unwin, published 1961, § 4.412, page 128.
Anagrams
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