(n.) A hard, tough, but easily fusible, alloy, originally consisting of tin with a little lead, but afterwards modified by the addition of copper, antimony, or bismuth.
(n.) Utensils or vessels made of pewter, as dishes, porringers, drinking vessels, tankards, pots.
Example Sentences:
(1) Scores of archaeologists working in a waterlogged trench through the wettest summer and coldest winter in living memory have recovered more than 10,000 objects from Roman London , including writing tablets, amber, a well with ritual deposits of pewter, coins and cow skulls, thousands of pieces of pottery, a unique piece of padded and stitched leather – and the largest collection of lucky charms in the shape of phalluses ever found on a single site.
(2) The pewter trait is allelic with and phenotypically identical to platinum, and represents an independent recurrence of this mutant.
(3) All of them were employed in small (not more than 30 persons) pewter factories and were randomly selected from those regularly controlled by the National Health Service, Occupational Health Unit of Brescia (USSL 41).
(4) An interview with Messud in New York magazine – in the form of an "at home" with her and her husband James Wood, once of this parish and now book critic at the New Yorker – kicks off by telling us that her hair has turned grey, swiftly qualified to a somewhat classier-sounding pewter, which, luckily, looks well with her shirt and necklace.
(5) Naked bulbs sit in glass lantern boxes on the walls; tiny pewter plates are laid on light oak refectory tables.
(6) Other finds include an amber charm in the shape of a gladiator's helmet, which may have been a good luck charm for an actual gladiator; a horse harness ornament combining two lucky symbols, a fist and a phallus, plus clappers to make a jingling sound as the horse moved; and a set of fine-quality pewter bowls and cups, which were deliberately thrown into a deep well.
(7) The results of a survey performed in 50 pewter manufacturing workers, as well as in 16 workmen involved in artistic bronze melting, are also reported.
(8) Compared with 1980, say, when Golding's Rites of Passage pipped Burgess's Earthly Powers , this is an age of pewter.
(9) The woman beside me – Stars ’n’ Stripes Hat – was wearing a pewter elephant pendant.
(10) It is the same with Miss Amelia Martin in "The Milliner's Mishap", eyeing up her friend's wedding breakfast ("pewter-pots at the corners; pepper, mustard and vinegar in the centre; vegetables on the floor") – a world so vivid and variegated to the person writing about it that there is almost too much to set down.
(11) I slammed the rusting door, and set off with my binoculars through a forest washed pewter with frost.
Trifle
Definition:
(n.) A thing of very little value or importance; a paltry, or trivial, affair.
(n.) A dish composed of sweetmeats, fruits, cake, wine, etc., with syllabub poured over it.
(n.) To act or talk without seriousness, gravity, weight, or dignity; to act or talk with levity; to indulge in light or trivial amusements.
(v. t.) To make of no importance; to treat as a trifle.
(v. t.) To spend in vanity; to fritter away; to waste; as, to trifle away money.
Example Sentences:
(1) After a relatively trifling lead exposure they developed the signs of acute lead intoxication.
(2) It featured Adam Dalgliesh, the poet-policeman, and he seemed old-fashioned, too, intellectual and a trifle upper-class.
(3) So Inter sold him to Real Madrid at the end of the 1995-96 season for the trifling sum of £3.5million - less than they had paid for him.
(4) 1.15pm: Dave Espley is not a man to be trifled with: "I'd agree with Steven Gardner regarding the use of video technology for goalline reviews, but I'd go slightly further with regard to the retrospective punishment for cheating.
(5) Clementine and dark chocolate trifle (above) This recipe gives classic trifle a zingy twist with clementines and orange blossom; a great make-ahead dinner party dessert.
(6) Of course it is the hyperbolic silliness – the make-or-break trifle sponge, custard thefts, and prolonged ruminations over "The Crumb" – that makes The Great British Bake Off so lovable.
(7) English friends had explained to me, not without pride, the importance of grumbling to the national character, but I still want to stress to every Londoner I meet that — take it from a visiting Los Angeleno — the tube exists, and that counts as no trifling achievement.
(8) But it is a trifle dispiriting even so to hear the education secretary parroting the same lines as his predecessors – even more so for teachers, I guess.
(9) This March, the proportions of loans taken by finance and property slumped all the way to a trifling 74.7%, while non-financial firms took a whopping 25.3%.
(10) It wasn't a baked Alaska, a fruit tart, a cream-laden trifle or a steamed treacle sponge.
(11) If you wish to have only a trifling risk group of 10% of all pregnant women, you can predict right only about 50% of all infants with low birth weight.
(12) Bake Off validates the small quiet dramas of the trifling everyday.
(13) As in most mutinous them-and-us industrial confrontations it had been simmering for years and then boiled over for what seemed the most trifling of reasons.
(14) "And he is at a loss whether to pity a people who take such arrant trifles in good earnest or to envy that happiness which enables a community to discuss them."
(15) I try to answer these letters, but compared to the stories I'm hearing, my experience has been trifling - as more than one correspondent has pointed out.
(16) With the menswear shows in the capital now on their sixth season, such trifles have their place even in the mainstream world of an Arcadia-owned brand.
(17) Some jokey conspiracy theories did the rounds and one YouTube user criticised Hadfield's interpretation of the song as being overly literal (arguably correct, but a trifle harsh, considering).
(18) Clegg was the deputy prime minister and would not jeopardise his relationship with the Conservative party over such a trifle.
(19) And what would become of my mornings in my little corner and my late nights scanning the TV channels, watching my crime shows, not a trifling thing?
(20) But it’s no trifle — especially given the governor’s national ambitions.