Dictionary

port-winy en · ADJ

Etymology

From port wine + -y.

Meanings

1. Having the taste, smell, colour or other qualities of port wine.
   • It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon’s oily flow, / I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky’s port-winey glow; [...] 1909, Robert W[illiam] Service, “The Ballad of One-eyed Mike”, in Ballads of a Cheechako, Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, →OCLC, stanza 6, page 52:
   • Her warm port-winey laugh filled all the bars. 1938, Graham Greene, chapter 1, in Brighton Rock, Vintage, published 2002:
   • In spite of the somewhat port-winy and ponderous exterior of the doctor, he had a shrewd eye and was really a man of very remarkable sense [...] 1936, G. K. Chesterton, “The Vampire of the Village”, in Detective Stories from The Strand, Oxford University Press, published 1991, page 5:
   • 1883, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Winning Shot” in Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Martin H. Greenberg (editors), Vampire Stories, New York: Skyhorse, 2009, p. 88 (first published in Bow Bells, 11 July, 1883), “You’re a good lass,” he remarked one evening, in a very port-winey whisper.

Forms