Etymology From Middle English vertegrece, verdegres, from Old French verte grez (literally “acidic green”), an alteration of older verte de Grece (literally “green of Greece”). The modern French writing of this word is vert-de-gris (literally “green of gray”).
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A blue-green patina or rust that forms on copper-containing metals.
Let's to^([sic]) the museum. Cannon-balls; arrow-heads; Roman glass and a forceps green with verdigris.1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC, page 17:
[…]there were three small brass coins there, the gift of Ymar. Their legends, like their faces, had worn away; and they were dark with verdigris — in appearance precisely the ancient things they were.1987, Gene Wolfe, chapter XLVIII, in The Urth of the New Sun, 1st US edition, New York: Tor Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 281:
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The Lethrblaka's blood, to Eragon's astonishment, was a metallic blue-green, not unlike the verdigris that forms on aged copper.2008, Christopher Paolini, “Assault on Helgrind”, in Brisingr, page 44:
Gamboge is one of the firſt yellows, which may be made to produce five or six ſorts of Green with verdegreaſe, according as the gambooge is in the greater or leſſer proportion; if it abounds, it will make a tolerable oak green, and being mixt with a greater quantity of verdegreaſe, it will make a fine graſs Green.1735, [John Barrow], “GREENS”, in Dictionarium Polygraphicum: Or, The Whole Body of Arts Regularly Digested. […], volume I (A–H), London: […] C[harles] Hitch and C[harles] Davis […], and S[amuel] Austen […], →OCLC:
[…]let them tell me candidly which is nearest truth, the gold of Turner, or the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens in which Claude, with the industry and intelligence of a Sevres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground.1843, [John Ruskin], chapter 2, in Modern Painters […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part II (Of Truth), section VI (Of Truth of Vegetation—Conclusion), § 7, page 123:
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Jeremiah found himself indoors, perfecting his Draftsmanship, bending all day over the work-table, grinding and mixing his own Inks,— siftings and splashes ev'rywhere of King's Yellow, Azure, red Orpiment, Indian lake, Verdigris, Indigo, and Umber.1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 24, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part One: Latitudes and Departures, page 242:
Etymology From Middle English vertegrece, verdegres, from Old French verte grez (literally “acidic green”), an alteration of older verte de Grece (literally “green of Greece”). The modern French writing of this word is vert-de-gris (literally “green of gray”).
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To cover, or coat, with verdigris.
[…] there were always some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle[…]1853 August 4 – 1858 January 3 (date written), Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, & Co., published 1870, →OCLC: