Crossword clues for meerschaum
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Meerschaum \Meer"schaum\ (m[=e]r"sh[add]m; 277), n. [G., lit., sea foam; meer sea + schaum foam; but it perh. is a corruption of the Tartaric name myrsen. Cf. Mere a lake, and Scum.]
(Min.) A fine white claylike mineral, soft, and light enough when in dry masses to float in water. It is a hydrous silicate of magnesia, and is obtained chiefly in Asia Minor. It is manufacturd into tobacco pipes, cigar holders, etc. Also called sepiolite.
A tobacco pipe made of this mineral; a meerschaum pipe.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
type of soft white clay, 1784; from 1789 as "tobacco pipe with a bowl made of meerschaum clay," from German Meerschaum, literally "sea-foam," so called from its frothy appearance; from Old High German mari "sea" (see mere (n.)) + scum "scum" (see skim (v.)). A loan-translation of Latin spuma maris, itself said to be a loan translation of Greek halos akhne, from Persian kaf-i-darya.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context uncountable English) A soft white mineral, chiefly used for smoking-pipes and cigar holders. 2 (context countable English) A smoking-pipe made from meerschaum.
WordNet
n. a white clayey mineral [syn: sepiolite]
a pipe having a bowl made of meerschaum
Usage examples of "meerschaum".
But Bott, having the soul of a true musician, cared but little for money and was happy enough so long as he could smoke his old meerschaum pipe and draw the bow across the cherished violin held lovingly to his cheek.
Peter had an ambition to become as rich as his neighbour, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum pipe three feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for dinner every day in the week.
In a large room, called the library, were found a box of cigars of the trabucos brand, and on the mantel-shelf a number of cigar-holders in amber and meerschaum.
In the evening, Cummings unexpectedly dropped in to show me a meerschaum pipe he had won in a raffle in the City, and told me to handle it carefully, as it would spoil the colouring if the hand was moist.
These heavy-eyed men with the alcoholized brains, these pallid youths with the nicotized optic ganglia and thinking-marrows brown as their own meerschaums, of whom you meet too many,--will ask all your wisdom to deal with their poisoned nerves and their enfeebled wills.
In his Victorian youth he'd often smoked, either small black cigarillos or a meerschaum pipe that he believed made him look grave and mature.
On the next occasion she smelt scent, and though he did not try to display the dandy meerschaum, she saw it, and heard the squeak of the new boots, not bluchers.
He held an elaborately carved meerschaum pipe and stared about the rubble that had once been number 12, Cobblers Lane.
His mismatched trousers and jacket, his calabash pipe with the meerschaum top, were almost as familiar as trademarks.
There were cigar cutters and pipe cleaners, cigarette holders and pipes carved from microporous meerschaum mined on the coasts of Two.
Perhaps he should get out his meerschaum pipe and his deerstalker hat from his Sherlock Holmes adventures on the holodeck.
He was stout, with an enormous set of Dundreary whiskers and a meerschaum pipe which he tamped down violently.
Then he peaceably tapped out the dottle of his meerschaum, refilled it from a twist of coarse paper, and lit it with a German tinder-box.
He was a thickset man with a penchant for glenurquhart plaid suits and meerschaum pipes.
Meerschaum, or hydrous magnesium silicate, is a sedimentary rock which occurred in strata composed in part of seashells that had fused together over the ages, and when it was all gone, that was it.