Monday Word: Bister

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

bister

[ˈbistər]

noun & adjective:
1. a yellowish-brown to dark-brown pigment made from the soot of burned wood
2. a shade of brownish-yellow color

examples:
1. Try this vintage make-up recipe using walnut leaves for stunning bister tint on lids. Erin Parsons on Youtube
2. Then he observed the frightful irritation of the breasts and mouth, discovered spots of bister and copper on the skin of her body, and recoiled bewildered. Against the Grain by J.-K. Huysmans
3. She was gloriously beautiful, too; even her brief experience in the west had brought back the missing roses to her cheek, and had banished the bister circles from beneath her eyes. The Chalice of Courage: A Romance of Colorado by Cyrus Townsend Brady

origin:
French bistre

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

A lot of romance and fantasy readers first encountered the word (with the variant spelling bistre) in Kushiel’s Dart (2001) by Jacqueline Carey, in the heroine’s self-description:

“My skin, too fair for the canon of Jasmine House, was nonetheless a perfectly acceptable shade of ivory. My hair, which grew to curl in charming profusion, was the color of sable-in-shadows, reckoned a coup in some of the Houses. My limbs were straight and supple, my bones a marvel of delicate strength…My eyes, when they settled, were that color the poets call bistre, a deep and lustrous darkness, like a forest pool under the shade of ancient oaks. Outside Terre d’Ange, perhaps, one might call it brown, but the language spoke outside our nation’s bounds is a pitiful thing when it comes to describing beauty.”

(For context: Terre d’Ange is an Alternate Fantasy Renaissance France whose people are descended from fallen angels and famous for their superhuman beauty. Phédre’s detailed self-inventory is justified: she was brought up in an order of elite sacred courtesans whose beauty is graded as ruthlessly as that of show dogs, and with a similar exact vocabulary; the Night Court has thirteen Houses, each devoted to a different aspect of love and sexuality, and each with a different “breed standard”. Jasmine House favors a dark-complected “Bodhistani” (Alternate Fantasy East Indian) look.

There’s also a red birthmark in her left eye—which, as with Rudolph the Reindeer, initially marks her as defective in the eyes of her peers but later proves to be a sign of her unique power and specialness. That, in turn, leads to a world-specific color term you might enjoy: “sangoire”, a blackened red reserved only for those of Phédre’s rare and revered neurotype.)

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Ah, it's interesting that it's eyes because the examples I saw were often of eyes OR the dark circles under eyes. I found it quoted in a Youtube video on a Victorian/Edwardian recipe for eyeshadow made of walnut leaves.

[full_metal_ox]

And why not, when brown-eyed people are the overwhelming majority of Earth’s human population?

(That’s also an obvious part of the reason that Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” has been so many boomers’ (and younger!) Couple Song. Infuriatingly, the terms of Morrison’s contract with Bang Records screwed him out of any royalties.)

[calzephyr]

I have seen so many drawings like this but didn't realize they had a name or it was a colour!

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Yay for new words!