amethyst

Word family

Related topics: Jewellery, Colours

DCJ[countableC] a valuable purple stone used in jewellery 紫（水）晶

2. CC[uncountableU] a light purple colour 紫水晶色，紫色

—amethyst adjectiveadj

Examples from the Corpus

amethyst• On display are earrings, necklaces and bracelets made from lapis, carnelian turquoise, jade, amber and amethyst.• Behind him on a finely carved desk was a gleaming working model of the St Petersburg-Cannes Express constructed in pearls and amethysts.• The glass is only one millimetre thick, and is pale amethyst in colour.• The Romans believed the amethyst prevented drunkenness and used to drink out of goblets studded with these purple gems.• There were the unfinished shoes for Emily Grenfell lying on the bench, the amethysts agleam against the softness of the leather.• Overhead, in the amethyst dusk above the Viennese Altstadt, Steel City was an evening star.• We drove through undulating farmland and it was as if the light were refracted through amethyst.• Two fifteenth-century icons set in beaten silver, studded with amethyst and quartz.

Origin amethyst

(1200-1300) Old French amatiste, from Latin amethystus, from Greek, “preventer of drunkenness, amethyst”, from methy “wine”

Chinese

Syllable

Corpus

BNC: 26900 COCA: 28106

amethyst

Stones used in jewellery: agate, amethyst, aquamarine...