carmine

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A purplish-red pigment, made from dye obtained from the cochineal beetle; carminic acid or any of its derivatives.
2. (countable, uncountable)A purplish-red colour, resembling that pigment.

   “He wore a great coat in midsummer, being affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of carmine.”

   “I am alive, I guess, / The branches on my hand / Are full of morning-glory, / And at my fingers' end / The carmine tingles warm,”

   “He pictured himself in an adobe house in Mexico, half-reclining on a rug-covered couch, his slender, artistic fingers closed on a cigarette while he listened to guitars strumming melancholy undertones to an age-old dirge of Castile and an olive-skinned, carmine-lipped girl caressed his hair.”

   “[…] the dawn breaking behind the hill-tops in our rear, the first narrow streaks of gold, like swords slitting the darkness, and then the growing light and the seas of carmine cloud stretching away into inconceivable distances […]”

   “The velvet I seen was brown, but in Boston they got all colors. Carmine. That means red but when you talk about velvet you got to say 'carmine.'”

adj

1. Of the purplish red colour shade carmine.

name

1. A male given name from Italian.
2. A surname from Italian.