- (Metallurgy)A small porous vessel typically constructed of pulverized bone-ash, in the form of a frustum of a cone, with a cavity in the larger end, in which lead containing gold and silver is cupeled.
Cupel1n. [C11]WW02-01
Cupel2 v. [C11]WW02-02
- trans.(Metallurgy)To separate gold or silver from lead using a cupel. Precious metals have a higher melting point than base metals; when lead is sufficiently heated it oxidizes and forms a litharge, which separates from the precious metal. This technique was used for refining or assaying gold and silver.
Intaglio n. [OED1]WW02-03
- A figure or design incised or engraved; a cutting or engraving in stone or other hard material.
- The process or art of carving or engraving in a hard material; incised carving as opposed to carving in relief.
- Anything ornamented with incised work; especially a precious stone having a figure or design cut into its surface, an incised gem.
- (Printing)A printing method by which the printing is done from polished plates having the lines cut in the surface and filled with ink. This includes copperplate and steelplate engraving among other methods.Stewart, The Printer's Dictionary of Technical Terms, 1912.
Maisonette n. [C11]WW02-04
- A section of a larger residential building let separately to a tenant. It is distinguished from an apartment or flat as a maisonette will typically have its own street-level entrance and two-floor, duplex construction. The term is used in the UK.Curl, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, third edition, 2015.The 1908 first edition of the OED, volume 6, part 2, "M"; the 1913 Webster's New International Dictionary; and The Century Dictionary of 1911 are all missing the now-more-common "duplex apartment" sense of maisonette. Maybe it wasn't a popular living arrangement back then.
- A small house.
Musa n. [W13]WW02-05
- (Botany)A genus of perennial, herbaceous, endogenous plants of great size, including the banana and plantain.
Musaceous adj. [W13]WW02-06
- (Botany)Of, or pertaining to, or resembling, plants of the
genus Musa.
Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol, and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which — though it is not often Death is is told so clearly to fuck off — the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations… so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fragrance to meander, repossess, prevail. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
Mullion n. [C11]WW02-07
- (Architecture)A division, typically of stone, between the lights of windows, screens, etc. When the mullions of a window subivide its lights into greater than four divisons, the king-mullions are those that span the entire aperture. Diamond mullions are square timber mullions set diagonally on plan and are found in medieval architecture.Curl, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, third edition, 2015.
- (Architecture)One of the divisions between panels in wainscoting.