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Lapidary   Listen
noun
Lapidary  n.  (pl. lapidaries)  
1.
An artificer who cuts, polishes, and engraves precious stones; hence, a dealer in precious stones.
2.
A virtuoso skilled in gems or precious stones; a connoisseur of lapidary work.
Lapidary's lathe, Lapidary's mill, Lapidary's wheel, a machine consisting essentially of a revolving lap on a vertical spindle, used by a lapidary for grinding and polishing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lapidary" Quotes from Famous Books



... an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, poeta non fit, sed nascitur; one is not made, but born a poet. Indeed his learning was but very little; so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smooth, even as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Discourse on Epitaphs, huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. "By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... quotations from this able state paper have already been made in the preceding pages, though it is so brilliant a piece of work that to quote is only to mutilate. Its argument, denunciation, humor, and satire are interwoven in a masterly combination. The renowned "sketch in the lapidary style," prepared for the gravestone of Thomas and Richard Penn, with the introductory paragraphs, constitutes one of the finest assaults in political literature.[12] It is unfortunately impossible to give any adequate idea or even abstract of a document which covers so ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... fathoms may be found. As I walked upon the edge I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay; the sun shone clear and green and steady in the deeps; the bay seemed rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them in a lapidary's shop; there was naught to show that it was water but an internal trembling, a hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows, and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The shadows of the rocks lay out for some distance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... compensated at first by the personal advice of a trained impresario, don Emilio Mario. Second, the drama is above all the genre of condensation, and Galds, even as a novelist, never condensed. His art was not that of the lapidary, nor even that of the short story writer. He has few novelas cortas to his credit, and he required pages and pages to develop a situation ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... like a precious stone kept long in the lapidary's hands before its brilliancy met the public gaze. I had my home under his father's roof, and sat daily at table with him, during my Junior year. We were colleagues afterwards, together with our classmate Jarvis ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... have been. But he rose, just as the book told him to do, in all his beauty, and enunciated in the crystal tones he had learned during the last few weeks at Madam Winterbottom's school of acting and elocution—in syllables chiseled from the stone of eloquence by the lapidary of culture: ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... statue by Chantrey which bears the following inscription, pronounced to be beyond comparison "the finest lapidary inscription in the English language." It is from the ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... successfully to check that decadence which had alarmed the best minds in France, there was a pioneer work to be done. It was necessary to intensify and purify the light of criticism. For this purpose the conversations of the salons culminated in the lapidary art of La Rochefoucauld, who was not a creator like Racine and Moliere, like Bossuet and Fenelon, but who prepared the way for these slightly later builders of French literature by clearing the ground ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... among the publicans! In what waste places our Lord Jesus finds His jewels! What exquisite possibilities Ruskin saw in a pinch of common dust! What radiant glory the lapidary can see in the rough, unpolished gem! The Lord loves to go into the unlikely place, and lead forth His saints. "In the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... considered. A brilliant which has successively graced the necks of a hundred beauties, or glittered for a century upon patrician brows, is weighed by the diamond merchant in the same scale with another which has just escaped from the wheel of the lapidary, and will be purchased or sold by him at the same price per carat. The great mass of commodities is intermediate in its character between these two extremes, and the periods of respective duration are very various. It is evident that the average price of those things which ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... beautiful bouquet, for the elderly spinsters, she said, sat on the stairs and kept up a constant supply; and she had also some exquisite Genoese wire ornaments from Cecil's counter, and a set of studs from a tray of polished pebbles sent up from Vivian's favourite lapidary at Rockpier. She had been amused to find the Miss Strangeways hunting over it to match that very simple-looking charm which Lena wore on to her watch, for, as she said, "the attraction must either be the simplicity of it, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... closely. Yes, there was no mistake, the emerald had been fashioned into the form of a perfect crocodile, with open jaws, even the teeth being finely chiselled, a veritable marvel of the lapidary's art. While we were both looking at it puzzled, Liola's eyes suddenly became attracted by sight of something in the package I had just opened, and stooping swiftly, picked out of a mass of ornaments a ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... the details are beautifully sharp and distinct, while they are on so small a scale that it requires a magnifying glass to distinguish them. The material of the cylinder is translucent green felspar, or amazon-stone, one of the hardest substances known to the lapidary. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson



Words linked to "Lapidary" :   expert, lapidarist, lapidist, engraver



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