polverine

English

Etymology

Italian polverino, from Latin pulvis (“dust”).

Noun

polverine (countable and uncountable, plural polverines)

1. (uncountable) Glassmaker's ashes; a kind of potash or pearlash, brought from the Levant and Syria, used in the manufacture of fine glass.
2. (countable) A tiny biting insect found in South America.
   • 1946, Kenneth Walker, I talk of dreams: an experiment in autobiography, page 145:

     Mosquitoes and polverines, little midges so small as to be scarcely visible, rose in a cloud from the water and settled on our hands and faces.

   • 1980, David Attenborough, The Zoo Quest Expeditions: Travels in Guyana, Indonesia, and Paraguay, →ISBN:

     The polverines, however, were so small and numerous that even though we massacred fifty with a slap it seemed to make no difference to the hazy black cloud which hung around our heads.

   • 1991, MS Aufdemberge, The Mission Efforts of the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Synod in the Chaco Province of Argentina:

     But all were more tolerable than those polverines.

References

• “polverine”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Italian

Noun

polverine f

1. plural of polverina

Anagrams

• prelevino