Sunday Word: Ormolu

[sallymn]

ormolu [awr-muh-loo]

adjective:
1 Any of several copper and zinc or tin alloys resembling gold in appearance and used to ornament furniture, moldings, architectural details, and jewelry
2 an imitation of gold.

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Examples:

Clars had described the clocks in its auction catalog as 'a rare pair of Chinese ormolu bronze automaton clocks' manufactured in a workshop in the southern port city of Guangzhou. (Steven Lee Myers and Graham Bowley, They Look Like the Emperors' Clocks. But Are They Real?, The New York Times, December 2018)

No gilded ormolu appears, certainly, but pieces are not without decorative flourishes. (Antonia van der Meer, Hemingway’s Homey Cuban House, The Wall Street Journal, June 2016)

He claimed almost 100 items had been stolen, including a Persian rug worth £35,000, valuable antiques and clocks, and a 19th century red marble rococo fire surround, with ormolu inserts. (Nina Morgan, St Albans fraudster who staged burglary and committed £1m mortgage fraud jailed, Herts Advertiser, January 2019)

He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be so late!" (Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray)

Origin:
1765, 'an alloy of copper, zinc, and tin resembling gold,' from French or moulu, literally 'ground gold,' from or 'gold' (from Latin aurum, from PIE aus- 'gold;' see aureate) + moulu 'ground up,' past participle of moudre 'to grind,' from Latin molere 'to grind' (from PIE root mele- 'to crush, grind'). The sense of the word before it reached English began as 'gold leaf prepared for gilding bronze, brass, etc.,' then shifted to 'gilded bronze,' then to various prepared metallic substances resembling it. (Online Etymology Dictionary)