purpureal

From Latin purpureus (“purple; clothed in purple; shining”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pəːˈpjʊəɹɪəl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /pɝˈpjʊɹi.əl/

purpureal (comparative more purpureal, superlative most purpureal)

1. (literary) Of a purple color.
   • 1744, Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination, London: R. Dodsley, Book 1, p. 26,

     […] gliding thro’ his daughter’s honour’d shades,

     The smooth Penéus from his glassy flood

     Reflects purpureal Tempe’s pleasant scene?

   • 1813, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab, London: for the author, Part I, p. 6,

     […] but the fair star

     That gems the glittering coronet of morn,

     Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,

     As that which, bursting from the Fairy’s form,

     Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,

   • 1815, William Wordsworth, “Laodamia” in Poems by William Wordsworth: including Lyrical Ballads, and the Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Volume 1, p. 229,

     […] fields invested with purpureal gleams;

   • 1909, Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven

     With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned

   • 1973, Derek Walcott, Another Life, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Chapter 10, p. 63,

     Above the altar-lace

     he mounted a triptych of the Assumption

     with coarse, purpureal clouds […]