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Stain   /steɪn/   Listen
noun
Stain  n.  
1.
A discoloration by foreign matter; a spot; as, a stain on a garment or cloth.
2.
A natural spot of a color different from the gound. "Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains."
3.
Taint of guilt; tarnish; disgrace; reproach. "Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains." "Our opinion... is, I trust, without any blemish or stain of heresy."
4.
Cause of reproach; shame.
5.
A tincture; a tinge. (R.) "You have some stain of soldier in you."
Synonyms: Blot; spot; taint; pollution; blemish; tarnish; color; disgrace; infamy; shame.


verb
Stain  v. t.  (past & past part. stained; pres. part. staining)  
1.
To discolor by the application of foreign matter; to make foul; to spot; as, to stain the hand with dye; armor stained with blood.
2.
To color, as wood, glass, paper, cloth, or the like, by processes affecting, chemically or otherwise, the material itself; to tinge with a color or colors combining with, or penetrating, the substance; to dye; as, to stain wood with acids, colored washes, paint rubbed in, etc.; to stain glass.
3.
To spot with guilt or infamy; to bring reproach on; to blot; to soil; to tarnish. "Of honor void, Of innocence, of faith, of purity, Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained."
4.
To cause to seem inferior or soiled by comparison. "She stains the ripest virgins of her age." "That did all other beasts in beauty stain."
Stained glass, glass colored or stained by certain metallic pigments fused into its substance, often used for making ornamental windows.
Synonyms: To paint; dye; blot; soil; sully; discolor; disgrace; taint. Paint, Stain, Dye. These denote three different processes; the first mechanical, the other two, chiefly chemical. To paint a thing is to spread a coat of coloring matter over it; to stain or dye a thing is to impart color to its substance. To stain is said chiefly of solids, as wood, glass, paper; to dye, of fibrous substances, textile fabrics, etc.; the one, commonly, a simple process, as applying a wash; the other more complex, as fixing colors by mordants.


Stain  v. i.  To give or receive a stain; to grow dim.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Stain" Quotes from Famous Books



... never fall In attitude as gracefully As my fair bride that is to be;— Nor ever Autumn's leaves of brown As lightly flutter to the lawn As fall her fairy-feet upon The path of love she loiters down.— O'er drops of dew she walks, and yet Not one may stain her sandal wet— Aye, she might dance upon the way Nor crush a single drop to spray, So airy-like she seems to me,— My bride, my bride ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... woman here with the new soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This new soul is ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... credulity to women—with that necessary estrangement from home which it is just within the verge of credibility to suppose might produce such an hallucination as is here described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. But when an actor comes, and instead of the delightful phantom—the creature dear to half-belief—which Bannister exhibited—displays before our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor—a jolly warm-hearted ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... undertaking a personal visit to every part of his government. He was a most prolific legislator, founding his rules, to some extent, on the laws of the Incas. He was shrewd but narrow minded and heartless; and his judicial murder of the young Inca, Tupac Amaru, has cast an indelible stain on his memory. ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... gate, and let her in, And fling It wide, For she has been cleansed from stain of sin," Saint Peter cried: And ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman


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