raisin
verbEtymology From Middle English raysyn, borrowed from Anglo-Norman reysin (“grape, raisin”), from Late Latin racīmus, from Latin racēmus. Possibly a distant cognate of Persian رز (raz, “vine”). Doublet of raceme.
8 senses
- 1Of fruit: to dry out; to become like raisins.
- 2To flavor (an alcoholic beverage) with fruit that has raisined.
- 3To add raisins to.
- 4To distribute throughout (with small bits or things), to…
- 5To shrivel.
- 6To crush or drain, so that all plumpness and vitality is gone.
- 7To cause to have wrinkles.
- 8To form wrinkles; to become wrinkled.
1
Of fruit: to dry out; to become like raisins.
- Second-crop fruit tends to show smaller clusters than first-crop, to have a high skin-to-juice ratio, and to be a good blending tool, according to Iantosca, although care must be exercised to ensure that the second-crop berries have not raisined.2008, John Winthrop Haeger, Pacific Pinot Noir:
- The ultraripe grapes are usually dried in the sun for a few days so they can raisin and their sugars can be concentrated before they are crushed and pressed.2010, Michael Gibson, The Sommelier Prep Course, page 214:
1 more example
- Too much water and the taste would be too thin. Too little and the grapes would raisin.2019, Sinclair Jayne, A Bride for the Texas Cowboy:
2
To flavor (an alcoholic beverage) with fruit that has raisined.
- We must have put down about thirty quart bottles, richly raisined and tightly corked.2005, Alan King, Matzo Balls for Breakfast, page 183:
- The 12-year-old Redbreast is the most easily found and shows single pot still at its most defiant: oily and rich with stewed plums, light leather, creme caramel and a dense, raisined palate where the tongue tries to cleave through the white peaches.2014, Dave Broom, Whisky: The Manual:
1 more example
- Another liquid—perhaps honey, a berry juice, a raisined or herbal wine—could be poured into the large opening and automatically fed into the interior of the vessel.2019, Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, page 177:
3
To add raisins to.
- Of sweets there are halvás of all kinds from the sweet-smalling tar-halwa raisined and saffroned to the coarse malídah or powdered sweetbread.1899, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, volume 9, number 2, page 150:
- Her nicest one is sweetened with sugar, then spiced, buttered, egged, and raisined, to be baked for a mere hour and a half because the proportion of meal to milk is so small that the result is more like a thickened custard than a hasty pudding.1986, Betty Harper Fussell, I Hear America Cooking, page 308:
1 more example
- He went then to each customer he had and gave them each a large, sweet, raisined loaf of caky bread.2021, Gertrude Stein, Three Lives:
4
Broadly To distribute throughout (with small bits or things), to dot or pepper.
- It was ground out solemnly in the academies, the University, the press, raisined with scholarly arguments quoted from the French physiocrats and positivists, in French, of course.2010, Anita Brenner, The Wind that Swept Mexico:
- While Mother raisined our oatmeal with niacin tablets and wheatgermed our milk, Opal baked us sugar cakes and sugar cookies, deep-fried us sugar doughnuts.2011, The Georgia Review - Volume 65, page 219:
1 more example
- I find it helpful to imagine the world as a fullness of varying density, not as a vacuum raisined with corpuscles but as a plenum instead.2019, Stephanie Strickland, Ringing the Changes, page 93:
5
Ambitransitive To shrivel.
- If my heart didn't make a new friend soon, it would raisin and then petrify.2008, Trey Ellis, Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood:
- Beneath a raisined basketball, among nail polish, dead spiders and other junk, I found a faded photograph of Hannah with cropped, spiky red hair and brilliant purple eye shadow painted all the way to her eyebrows.2013, Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics:
2 more examples
- My raisined heart is shrinking.2013, Brittany Aguilera, Silent Hurricanes, page 17:
- My mom and my dad, the way they were before everything happened and their souls raisined and they went bad.2016, Karen Rivers, The Girl in the Well Is Me:
6
To crush or drain, so that all plumpness and vitality is gone.
- Out in the bean field Shinto was being horribly bullied by horse-flies, and armed with that reflective strip of marker post– still an invaluable humane goad when the sun was in the right position– I raisined four against his loins. Oddly, he seemed to understand why I kept hitting him.2005, Tim Moore, Spanish Steps, page 196:
- And shouldn't we be getting out of here before we get, y'know, raisined or something?'2008, Martin Ed Chatterton, The Brain Full of Holes:
1 more example
- I haven't seen him since about a week before you got raisined, but Lan saw him just before.2023, Crimpy G, Huntress and The Alpha King:
7
To cause to have wrinkles.
- She was a bony woman with hollow cheeks, her skin raisined by years of hard labor in the sun.2012, Anuradha Roy, The Folded Earth, page 18:
- Before him, a stoic mother, hands raisined from the scrubbing of clothing and children.2016, Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume Two: Empire Decayed, page 67:
1 more example
- As her fingers became raisined by the soap suds, she wondered what Eliza was up to.2019, A. S. Kingly, If Stilettos Could Speak:
8
To form wrinkles; to become wrinkled.
- We soaked together in long baths until we raisined, skin pressed to skin .1998, Witness - Volume 12, page 151:
- She remained under the spray until the hot water heater ran out and her skin raisined.2016, RaeAnne Thayne, Renegade Father:
1 more example
- He can barely imagine it, but years and years from now, the day will come when his skin will have raisined, and even something as simple as sweeping the floor will no longer be easy.2023, Karin Lin-Greenberg, You Are Here:
- Derived terms
- Asian don't raisin