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Umber   Listen
noun
Umber  n.  
1.
(Paint.) A brown or reddish pigment used in both oil and water colors, obtained from certain natural clays variously colored by the oxides of iron and manganese. It is commonly heated or burned before being used, and is then called burnt umber; when not heated, it is called raw umber. See Burnt umber, below.
2.
An umbrere. (Obs.)
3.
(Zool.) See Grayling, 1.
4.
(Zool.) An African wading bird (Scopus umbretta) allied to the storks and herons. It is dull dusky brown, and has a large occipital crest. Called also umbrette, umbre, and umber bird.
Burnt umber (Paint.), a pigment made by burning raw umber, which is changed by this process from an olive brown to a bright reddish brown.
Cologne umber, or German umber, a brown pigment obtained from lignite. See Cologne earth.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Umber" Quotes from Famous Books



... very close together and are shining white. The base extends deep into the ground, and is sheathed with a membrane that is loose and easily broken off. It is a very common mushroom, and we shall often find it, but it varies in color; it is sometimes umber, often white, and even has a faint yellowish or greenish hue ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... looks delightful from Haven Point. At the edge of Brownsea Island the foam-flecked beach glistens in the sun. The sand-dunes fringing the enclosing sheet of water are yellow, the salt-marshes of the shallow pools stretch in surfaces of dull umber, brightened in parts by vivid splashes of green. On a calm day the stillness of utter peace seems to rest over the spot, broken only by the lapping of the waves, and the hoarse cries of the sea-birds as they search ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... striata. The striated laughing-thrush. A common bird, but as it keeps to dense foliage it is heard more often than seen. Of its curious cries Jerdon likens one to the clucking of a hen which has just laid an egg. The tail is chestnut. The rest of the plumage is umber brown, but every feather has a white streak along the middle. These white streaks give the bird the striated appearance from which it ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... which rose the minarets and bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar. Numerous gipsy tents covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman, with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt umber face, cried out in a rage, "See how the Royal Servian people now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback," alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to ride ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... breakfasted hastily in my bedroom, ready equipped for a journey in my ulster and cloth cap. I had dismissed the hotel porter at the station, and left my bag at the cloak-room, after taking out of it an umber bundle and substituting the ulster. The umber bundle, which consisted of my oilskins, and within them my sea-boots and a few other garments and necessaries, the whole tied up with a length of tarry rope, was now in the rack above me, and (with a stout stick) represented ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... of pearls over rock-shelves into translucent pools where lilies lay asleep, dreaming of their own pale beauty. Long, green pergolas, starred with flowers, framed blue-veiled pictures of distant coast-line, and mediaeval strongholds, coloured with the same burnt umber as the hills on which they stood, gloomed and glowed ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... The country people will not use or adopt that pretty word Epaigwit, 'the home of the wave,' which rivals in beauty of conception an eastern expression. The place was originally granted to a fellow of the name of Umber, who was called after the celebrated navigator Cook. These two words when united soon became corrupted, and the magnificent sheet of water was designated 'the Cucumber Lake,' while its splendid cataract, known in ancient days by the Indians as the 'Pan-ook,' or 'the River's Leap,' is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... of umber near Larnaca have been let, and it is by no means improbable that an extension may in a few years be apparent in enterprises of this description. Copper mines near Khrysokhus are being opened, but the preliminary ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... had elected to copy was Reynolds's angel heads. She looked at the brown gold of their hair, and wondered what combination of umber and sienna would produce it. She studied the delicate bloom of their cheeks, and wondered what mysterious proportions of white, ochre, and carmine she would have to use to obtain it. The bright blue and grey of ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... on these specimens run as follows: Plant 3—6 cm. high, pileus 1.5—3 cm. broad, stem 3—4 mm. in thickness. Pileus convex to expanded, fleshy, thin on the margin, margin at first incurved, creamy white with egg yellow stains, darker on the center, in age somewhat darker to umber or fuliginous, moist when fresh, surface soon dry, flesh tinged with yellow. The gills are white when young, then grayish to pale rose, and finally light purple brown, rounded in front, tapering behind (next the stem) and rounded, free from the stem, 4—5 mm. broad. Basidia clavate, 25—30 ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... regular or plasmodiocarp, sometimes united into an aethalium. The wall a thin, firm, persistent membrane, often granulose-thickened, usually rupturing irregularly. Spores globose, usually some shade of umber or ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan

... brown or black. The pattern need by no means be elaborate. A wreath of ivy simply out-lined in sepia or india-ink, or a group of figures sketched with the same, produces a very pleasing and harmonious effect. "Prout's Brown," a sort of fluent ink of a burnt-umber tint, will be found excellent for drawing purposes. For designs, our own ST. NICHOLAS will furnish excellent examples. Scarcely a number but holds something which a clever artist can adapt to his purpose. The "Miss Muffett" series, for example, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... was between twelve and eighteen months old, without any premonitory symptom. The disease occupied the parts habitually uncovered in childhood. The whole of these areas was more or less densely speckled with pigmented, freckle-like spots, varying in tint from a light, raw umber to a deep sepia, and in size from a pin's head to a bean, and of a roundish and irregular shape. Interspersed among the pigment-spots, but not so numerous, were white atrophic spots, which in some parts coalesced, forming white, shining, cicatrix-like areas. The skin upon this was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Carmine, White, Lilac, Sky Blue, Pink, Yellow, Flesh color, Orange, Brown, Purple, Light Green, Dark Green and Blue. With a few colors, however, all the rest may be made thus: Orange, by Yellow and Red; Purple, with Blue and Red; Green, Blue and Yellow; Brown, with Umber, Carmine and Lamp Black; Scarlet, Carmine and Light Red. While it is true that a little color may relieve the dark metallic look of some Daguerreotypes, it must not be concealed that the covering of the fine delicate outline and exquisite ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... from tempestuous seas, this quiet little world, where the pulses of passion beat not; where existence was like a sleep, a gradual drifting away of days and weeks, marked only by the changing note of birds, the deepening umber on the birch, the purpling of beech buds, and the starry celandine shining out of grassy banks that had so lately been obliterated ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... it. But between the railway station and the High Street it is desolation and blank walls. A few pretty old cottages jut out over a narrow pavement; beyond a huddled roof or two rises the tower of St. Nicholas' Church, umber and solid; nearly all else is tumbled down ugliness, broken brickwork, mud and shaggy grass. A clear space, a level green, a bed of flowers—what an introduction that might be to Guildford. But, doubtless, the rubbish ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... oak graining, the ground coat is yellow ochre and the graining coat raw umber. House painters are not thoroughly agreed on graining for oak and walnut, so that they do not always mix the same shades; in fact, since there is no school of house painting, it is largely a matter ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... of earth, blurred and ragged clouds showed every conceivable tone of umber and grey, from purest pearl-white to darkest depths of indigo. Only low down, where a blue-black mass ended with level abruptness, a flaming strip of day was splashed along the west—one broad brush-stroke, as it were, by some Titanic artist ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... afternoon the river ran placidly between the hills and low-lying meadows; here and there, high on a wooded hillside, a maple flamed among the greenness of the walnuts and locusts, or the chestnuts showed the bronze beginnings of autumn. Ahead of them the sunshine had melted into an umber haze, which in the direction of Mercer deepened into a smudge of black. Elizabeth was twisting her left hand about to get different lights on her ring, which she had managed to slip on her finger when ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... other days as it dashed over its pebbly bed, and recalling times, when, free from all care, he had strayed by its wood-fringed banks, to listen to the pleasant sound of running waters, and watch the shining pebbles beneath them, and the swift trout and dainty umber glancing past. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... be all glistening umber brown and dusky yellow, and its surface shone like burnished tortoiseshell in the glowing sun, while to the boy's eyes it seemed, from the height to which the swaying head was raised, that the body, half hidden from him by ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... as Valerius, Salvius, Secundus, should be the first called. Scipio Africanus, reproaching his soldiers after a mutiny, finds an aggravation of their crime in the fact that one with so ill- omened a name as Atrius Umber should have seduced them, and persuaded them to take him for their leader. So strong is the conviction of men that names are powers. Nay, it must have been sometimes thought that the good name might so react on the evil nature that it should not remain evil altogether, but might ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... called soap. This kind is the most durable, is used for priming purposes, and consists of lead, zinc, and iron bases, of which red lead takes up the most oil; next, white lead, the pure carbonate Dutch process made, following with zinc white and iron carbonates, as iron ore paint, Turkey umber, yellow ocher; also faintly the chromates of lead—chrome-green and chrome-yellow, finishing with the poorest of all, modern white lead, made by the wet or vinegar process. The second class being neutrals have no chemical affinity to linseed oil; they need a large quantity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... be more charming than the flushing of the mountains at sunrise and sunset, and the magnificence of the windy, wintry noon. The rocky spires, pinnacles, and domes, glowing with gorgeous golden light, and the lower ranges, shaded with hazy blue, umber-red, and luminous purple, fell into picture and formed prospects indescribably pure and pellucid. But the average of the aneroid (29.19) gave an altitude of eight hundred feet; and even in this submaritime region, the minimum temperature was 42 deg. F., ranging to a maximum of 85 deg ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... seeming, with nut-brown sail unstirred, to remain where the impatient steamer had met it, dropped a solitary passenger overside, and cast him loose upon the breadth of the antipodes. Rare and far, the sails of junks patched the horizon with umber polygons. Rudolph, sitting among his boxes in the sampan, viewed by turns this desolate void astern and the more desolate sweep of coast ahead. His matting sail divided the shining bronze outpour of an invisible river, divided a low brown shore beyond, and above ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly facing about, and exchanging the sombre black of their bases for the orange of the two sides including their acute angle; the militia of the Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and blue; the mauve, ultra-marine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the Square artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermillion guns; the dashing and flashing of the five-coloured and six-coloured Pentagons and Hexagons careering across the field in their offices ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... umber-brown than L. nair, and does not exhibit any tendency to grizzling, and the under surface is only somewhat hoary, well washed with brownish; the chin and edge of the lips are whitish; and the silvery hoary on the sides ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... Glides noiseless as an oar." The heavy musty air, the black desks, The bent heads and the rustling noises In the great dome Vanish ... And The sun hangs in the cobalt-blue sky, The boat drifts over the lake shallows, The fishes skim like umber shades through the undulating weeds, The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns, And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle About the cleft battlements of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... accommodated themselves fitly to the time of day. They had been, for him, at early morning, pretty middling white, that is whity-brown; thence they passed, with the passing hour kindly, through the shades of burnt sienna, raw umber, and bistre; until, just as we may notice in the case of marking-ink; that which, five minutes ago, was as water only delicately dirtied, has become ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... The umber-colored silk she wore toned down what I, who fancied the delicate sea-shell hue of blondes, should have termed her rather strong colors; and now, bent on my enjoyment rather than improvement, she looked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... it to match the other. A box containing the following colours in powder will be found of great utility, and when required for use they should be mixed with French polish and applied with a brush. The pigments most suitable are: drop black, raw sienna, raw and burnt umber, Vandyke brown, French Naples yellow (bear in mind that this is a very opaque pigment), cadmium yellow, madder carmine (these are expensive), flake white, and light or Venetian red; before mixing, the colours should ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... matters, which he then considered very great secrets, are now universally known. But I must not omit to note that he makes no mention of some earth colours, such as dark terra rossa, cinnabar and some greens in glass, perhaps because they were not in use. In like manner umber, yellow-lake, the smalts in fresco and in oil, and some greens and yellows in glass which the painters of that age lacked, have since been discovered. The end of the treatise deals with mosaics, with the grinding of colours in oil to make red, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... rolling of the ship. One of the doctor's medical books lay open on the table, half of the leaves gutted out, I suppose, for pipelights. In the midst of all this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown as umber. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... commonest of our marine plants, Chondrus crispus. It occurs in the greatest profusion on this coast, in every pool between tide-marks; and everywhere - except in those of the highest level, where constant exposure to light dwarfs the plant, and turns it of a dull umber-brown tint - it is elegant in form and brilliant in colour. The expanding fan-shaped fronds, cut into segments, cut, and cut again, make fine bushy tufts in a deep pool, and every segment of every frond reflects a flush of the most lustrous ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... he, "that fall on one side of the roof of that 'ouse go into the 'Umber, and the water that fall on the other side go into the Mersey. Last winter that 'ouse were covered owre wi' snow, and they made a harchway to go in and out. We 'ad a heighteen ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... the big blade; then I go over it a second time with the little blade, more carefully; then I put in the ears and tail with a drop of glue, and paint it with a 'non-poisonous' paint—Vandyke brown for the horses, foxes, and cows; slate gray for the elephants and camels; burnt umber for the chickens, zebras, and so on; then, last, a dot of Chinese white for the eyes, and there you are, all finished. They sell for nine cents a dozen. Only I can't ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... unbleached muslin, some tacks and white lead, I made a canvas. In the shop were white lead, lampblack, king's yellow and red lead, with oil and turpentine. I watched Bard mix paints, and concluded I wanted brown. Years before, I heard of brown umber, so I got umber and some brushes and begun my husband's portrait. I hid it when he was there or I heard any one coming, and once blistered it badly trying to dry it before the fire, so that it was a very rough work; but it was a portrait, a daub, a likeness, and the hand was ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... used for oil stains are: burnt and raw umber, burnt and raw sienna, Vandyke brown, drop black, and medium chrome yellow. These colors may be varied by mixing. For example, for a green stain, take two parts of drop black and one part of medium chrome yellow, and ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... on the roof among the bubbly domes for a long time, looking over the umber-coloured town and the flowing oasis which swept to Bou-Saada's brown feet like a tidal wave. It was not yet time to go and ask questions of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... water colors or in pencil, by young ladies who had left. In the former works of art, distant nature was represented as, on the whole, of a mauve hue, while the foreground was mainly composed of burnt-umber rocks, touched up with orange. The shadows in the pencil drawings had an agreeably brilliant polish, like that which, when conferred on fenders by Somebody's Patent Dome-Blacklead, "increases the attractions of the fireside," ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... mixed with black; median pair of dorsal light stripes grayish mixed with Buckhorn-Brown; outer pair of dorsal light stripes creamy white; sides Buckhorn-Brown; rump Pale Smoke Gray mixed with Saccardo's Umber; dorsal surface of tail black mixed with Buckhorn-Brown; ventral surface of tail Sayal Brown; outermost edge of tail Light Buff; antipalmar surface of forefeet Warm Buff; antiplantar surface of hind foot Ochraceous-Tawny; underparts creamy white with dark underfur. Skull: Large, with ...
— Taxonomy of the Chipmunks, Eutamias quadrivittatus and Eutamias umbrinus • John A. White

... was the glassblowers of Venice who taught them how," and not a ghost of a smile came across his fine, burnt-umber face. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... to one quarter (1/4) pound of beeswax. Warm, taking care not to let any fire reach the turpentine. Rub in the floor with flannel and polish with hard brush. A little powdered burnt umber mixed in gives a ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... They walked cautiously, for by experience they had learned that at the very edge, and in the lea of an old burned log, it was possible a fine big cock-partridge might be sunning himself. The popples, shining silvery, were almost bare of leaves, but the scrub oaks clung tenaciously to a crackling umber-brown foliage. It was now near the close of the afternoon. The game bag was empty. Both boys trod on eggs, scrutinizing every inch of the ground ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... its smooth flank, ere he ground up the coprolites gathered from the river-bed for red and yellow paint to colour the drawings. On the western side the great boulder was dressed in crimson lake and yellow-umber-hued lichens from base to summit, and in August, when the aloes flowered in magnificent fiery clusters upon its crown and at its base; and in May, when the sweet-scented clematis wreathed it in exquisite trails, and white and rose and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... morning, on a landscape that was novel, yet somehow familiar. The river, a quarter of a mile away, very clear and unruffled under its groves of cottonwood, wound through low barren hills, as unlike as could be to the cliffs and chasms we knew so well. But the colours—gray, red, and umber, just as Moran has painted them—reassured us. We seemed not so ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... rim of the desert, flung long crimson shafts heavenward—in hues of rose and amethyst, against the deep umber and the purple of far spaces. From monotonous and burning desolation the desert had become a vast momentary solitude of changing beauty and enchantment. Then all at once the colors vanished, space shrank, and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... necessary clew. He remembered his mother's writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting "crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather spindling Tump Pack he ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... crosses the throat. The egrets or ear feathers are tipped with blackish-brown, the inner webs being white varied with wood-brown. The whole of the back is marked with undulated lines or fine bars of dark umber-brown, alternating with white: on the greater wing coverts the white is replaced by pale wood-brown. The primary and secondary feathers are wood-brown, margined inwards with white. They are crossed by umber-brown bars on both webs, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... and salutary meals to beasts of prey. Long grass makes easy stalking. We saw a few ostriches, some giraffe, and three or four singly adventurous oryx. The ripening grasses were softer than a rippling field grain; and even more beautiful in their umber and browns. Although apparently we travelled a level, nevertheless in the extreme distance the plains of our hunting were dropping below, and the far off mountains were slowly rising above the horizon. On the other side were two very green hills, looking nearly straight up and ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... hot melted glue, two-thirds flour paste, a quantity of paper pulp, a small amount of boiled linseed oil, a very little of Venetian turpentine, boracic acid, and arsenic. Thicken to modeling consistency with plaster of paris, coloring by adding some dry raw umber or lamp black ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... 'Don't! It makes me want to get out there again. What colour that was! Opal and umber and amber and claret and brick-red and sulphur—cockatoo-crest—sulphur—against brown, with a nigger-black rock sticking up in the middle of it all, and a decorative frieze of camels festooning in front of a pure pale turquoise ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... can be used for this dish are the tunny, the umber or grayling, the sword fish and any piece of fish of large size and good savor. A pound may be sufficient ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile

... was an old man on the Humber, Who dined on a cake of Burnt Umber; When he said, "It's enough!" they only said, "Stuff! You amazing old ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... in poor and mean attire, And with a kind of umber smirch my face; The like do you; so shall we pass ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... the old ones crow's-feet and crafty. When I greeted the woman, she answered in Romany, and said she was a Stanley from the North. She lied bravely, and I told her so. It made no difference in any way, nor was she hurt. The brown boy, who seemed like a goblin, umber-colored fungus, growing by a snaky black wild vine, sat by her and stared at me. I was pleased, when he said tober, that she corrected him, exclaiming earnestly, "Never say tober for road; that is canting. Always say drom; that is good Romanes." ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... or buckwheat, and the very sheep find nothing to nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and dates, at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of eighteen. Inside were old unpainted desks,—unpainted, but browned with the umber of human contact,—and hacked by innumerable jackknives. It was long since the walls had been whitewashed, as might be conjectured by the various traces left upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads could reach them. A curious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... umber, peroxide of iron, and even brick-dust, were employed to produce a cheaper article, but modern science and legislation combined have rendered such practices almost impossible. As early as the reign of George III. an Act[8] was passed, providing ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head

... and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll's favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... would be overpowering but for the soothing and reassuring effect of colour— as where, at point of contact, the opaque snow of the upper half, with cirrhus-like edge, overlies rather than meets the indescribable wealth of lucent and fathomless umber, which soul-satisfying colour intensifies toward the rounded heel, softening to a paler tint in its serene re-ascent, till the meerschaum terminates in a heavy, semi-cylindrical collar, of almost audacious ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy



Words linked to "Umber" :   earth color, chocolate, deep brown, brownness, brown, coffee



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