Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A still.
  • noun In heraldry, the representation of an alembic or still used as a bearing.
  • To strain or pass through a still.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete An alembic; a still.
  • transitive verb obsolete To distill.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb obsolete, transitive To distill.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word limbec.

Examples

  • When she weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops from the limbec.

    Essays and Tales Joseph Addison 1695

  • They were full of burning water five times distilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly put into Pallas 'golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus.

    Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 5 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518

  • An amber drop, diftilled by The fparkling limbec of an eye,

    A select collection of poems: with notes [by J. Nichols]. 1781

  • They were full of burning water five times distilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly put into Pallas’ golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • They were full of burning water five times distilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly put into Pallas’ golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • About two foot and a half below that gold plate, the three chains were fastened to three handles that were fixed to a large round lamp of most pure crystal, whose diameter was a cubit and a half, and opened about two hands 'breadths o' top; by which open place a vessel of the same crystal, shaped somewhat like the lower part of a gourd-like limbec, or an urinal, was put at the bottom of the great lamp, with such a quantity of the afore-mentioned burning water, that the flame of the asbestine wick reached the centre of the great lamp.

    Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 5 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • One for the Wordnik listers of heraldic terms.

    September 1, 2011