(n.) A valuable fur-bearing animal of the genus Mustela (M. erminea), allied to the weasel; the stoat. It is found in the northern parts of Asia, Europe, and America. In summer it is brown, but in winter it becomes white, except the tip of the tail, which is always black.
(n.) The fur of the ermine, as prepared for ornamenting garments of royalty, etc., by having the tips of the tails, which are black, arranged at regular intervals throughout the white.
(n.) By metonymy, the office or functions of a judge, whose state robe, lined with ermine, is emblematical of purity and honor without stain.
(n.) One of the furs. See Fur (Her.)
(v. t.) To clothe with, or as with, ermine.
Example Sentences:
(1) Ermine cloaks the coalition's first post-local election test on Wednesday.
(2) I’ll know that the high walls of inequality are tumbling down when a lass from Lincoln’s Ermine estate with a degree from Lincoln University and years of frontline policing experience, including running a police force, gets to run the Met.
(3) But it did have a very particular place in the Liberal Democrat heart, both because the ermine-trimmed anachronism that still co-writes Britain's law offends the party's modernity and rationalism, and because great Liberal heroes moved heaven and earth to reform the chamber a century ago.
(4) The site of modification of the COOH-erminal half was localized in the tryptic peptide which contained the only glutamic acid residue in this fragment of H1...
(5) In the hundred years since the shake-up provoked by the People's Budget, countless blueprints for wholesale rationalisation have run up against ermine-trimmed facts on the ground.
(6) For services to West Ham, women in business and The Apprentice, Karren Rita Brady, hereafter to be known as Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge, stood robed in ermine before the Speaker, Baroness D’Souza, to be formally introduced into the House of Lords.
(7) Among 22 adult ermines, 41% were infected by one or more of five species (Taenia mustelae, Alaria mustelae, Molineus patens, M. mustelae and Trichinella spiralis).
(8) When I got my first electric guitar, I wasn't happy with the look of it, so he found me some ermine white [paint], left over from his second beloved Ford Cortina, and helped me spray it.
(9) The royal horses could have been left to munch hay in their stables, the ermine stored in mothballs, and the Crown jewels kept on show at the Tower.
(10) The potassium concentration (aK) of the environment of a repetitively discharging membrane can increase sufficiently for a supra-threshold depolarization at afferent erminals.
(11) This was no coronation, rather an investiture or an inauguration, almost republican with some red ermine attached.
(12) Once burgers and hot dogs had been given the pimped ermine-collar treatment, it was only a matter of time before chicken went the same way.
(13) A vision in ermine, tiaras, wigs and scarlet robes.
(14) Trichinella spiralis occurred with a maximum prevalence of 50% in martens, but only occurred in 9% of ermines.
(15) Dealing as it does with a family of ermine miscreants, the show looks and feels luxurious, even when Fleming is unfurling reams of dickheadery.
(16) A study was made of the pathogenicity of brucellae culture isolated from various wild and Game animals of the extreme North of the USSR (wolf, polar fox, ermine, glutton).
(17) The term ermine phenotype has been chosen to describe patients with white hair with black tufts.
(18) Helminths are reported for the first time from ermines (Mustela erminea) and martens (Martes americana) in Washington (USA).
(19) The Guardian's Ermine Sayer spent the day at Passmore's Academy.
(20) Labour donor Sir Gulam Noon will also be taking ermine, as will broadcaster and campaigner Joan Bakewell and Gordon Brown adviser Stewart Wood.
Vair
Definition:
(n.) The skin of the squirrel, much used in the fourteenth century as fur for garments, and frequently mentioned by writers of that period in describing the costly dresses of kings, nobles, and prelates. It is represented in heraldry by a series of small shields placed close together, and alternately white and blue.
Example Sentences:
(1) NA-induced and 5-HT-induced platelet aggregation and 5-HT uptake vaired accordingly.
(2) The fluorescence yields of tyrosine and tryptophan vaired 10- and 100-fold, respectively; the Stokes' shift of tryptophan ranged from 328 to 365 nm, but that for tyrosine was apparently invariant (305-307nm).
(3) The phenotype of the un-3 mutant raises the possibility that the vaIRS ORF has a second function in addition to protein synthesis.
(4) The rabbit thoracic aorta was studied by EM and vital staining with Evans blue at vaired points of time after a single lesion produced by an embolectomy catheter.
(5) Phase shifts of firing frequency relative to sinusoidally vaired chair position varied in units with different tonic discharge frequencies.
(6) The cyt-20-1 mutation in the vaIRS ORF results in severe deficiencies of both mitochondrial and cytosolic vaIRS activities, whereas the un-3 mutation does not appear to result in a deficiency of these activities or of mitochondrial or cytosolic protein synthesis sufficient to account for its temperature-sensitive growth.
(7) The normal level of PO2 in endolymph vaires between 20 and 30 mm Hg.
(8) The intensity of staining in the tumours vaired from one cell to another but was ingeneral less than that found for normal C cells.
(9) VAIRs were only observed in patients revascularized at an early stage (p 0.02) and in 54.5 p. cent of them.
(10) The speed of dark adaptation vaired considerably from cell to cell.