Dictionary

atrament en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈæ.tɹə.mɛnt/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English atrament, from Latin ātrāmentum, from ātrāre (“to blacken”), from āter (“black”). First attested in the 14th century.

Meanings

1. (archaic, countable, uncountable) Ink or an inklike substance.
2. (countable, figuratively, rare, uncountable) Any particularly black liquid substance.
   • The irises of those eyes, whose pupils were blacker than atrament, varied singularly in shades of shifting colour. 1908, Théophile Gautier, “King Candaules”, in Lafcadio Hearn, transl., Stories, New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, →OCLC, page 91:
   • Onyx flashed in her hair, and the delicate fabric that revealed, concealing, the outlines of her face and her body had the same silvery atrament of the stars. 1994, Umberto Eco, translated by William Weaver, The Island of the Day Before, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, →ISBN, page 158:
   • Everything was lost to sight in that ponderous atrament which precedes the dawn. 1927, Reginald Wright Kauffman, “Pursuit” (chapter XXVIII), in Blind Man, New York: Duffield & Company, page 268:

Forms

Relateds

atramentous · atramental · atramentaceous · atramentarious