soilure

English

Etymology

From Old French soilleure, from soillier (“to soil”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈsɔɪljʊə/, /ˈsɔɪljə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

soilure (plural soilures)

1. Making or becoming dirty; soiling, staining.
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:

     He merits well to haue her, that doth seeke her,
     Not making any scruple of her soylure […].

   • 1913, Rebecca West, “Lynch Law”, in Jane Marcus, editor, The Young Rebecca, Virago, published 1982, page 207:

     Much more powerful than moral enthusiasm is the disinclination of the immaculate flesh to risk the soilure of the streets.

   • 1925, Edwin Arlington Robinson, “New England:”, in Dionysus in Doubt:

     Passion here is a soilure of the wits,
     We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear ...

   • 1942, William Faulkner, “Pantaloons in Black”, in Go Down, Moses:

     […] the fire which was to have lasted to the end of them, before which in the days before he was able to buy the stove he would enter after his four-mile walk from the mill and find her, the shape of her narrow back and haunches squatting, one narrow spread hand shielding her face from the blaze over which the other hand held the skillet, had already fallen to a dry, light soilure of dead ashes when the sun rose yesterday […]

Anagrams

• louries, lousier