wine-dark

English

Etymology

The traditional translation/calque of Ancient Greek οἶνοψ (oînops), equivalent to wine + dark.

Adjective

wine-dark (not comparable)

  1. (literary, especially of the sea) Resembling the dark color (or perhaps other properties) of wine.
    • 2015, Frederic W. Farrar, Gathering Clouds: A Tale of The Days of Saint Chrysostom:
      He had that type of countenance which dim tradition was already beginning to assign to the Son of Man—the perfectly oval face, the waved and wine-dark hair, the glowing complexion, the eyes whose depths seemed to be lighted by some holy spiritual flame within—of Him who had been fairer than the children of men.
    • 2015, Anthony Adolph, Brutus of Troy: And the Quest for the Ancestry of the British, page 200:
      The Trojan War was probably real enough, but the myths of Aeneas crossing the wine-dark Mediterranean to lay the foundations of the Roman Empire in Italy, and Brutus's subsequent journey to fill Britain with descendants of the Trojans, are myths.

Alternative forms

Translations

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