Tyrian

comparative more Tyrian · superlative most Tyrian

1. From or relating to Tyre, Lebanon.
2. Having a purple colour produced by the dye Tyrian purple.

   Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The Genii of the stream; Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue Thro' richest purple to the view Betrayed a golden gleam.

   1747, Thomas Gray, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes

   2 more examples

   It was no longer torture-torn and hateful, as I had seen it when she was cursing her dead rival by the leaping flames, no longer icily terrible as in the judgment-hall, no longer rich, and sombre, and splendid, like a Tyrian cloth, as in the dwellings of the dead.

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

   I was wondering at these hanging gardens amid the forest of pink and white marble, red sardonyx, blue-gray, and cream, and black bricks, and green and yellow and tyrian tiles, when the sight of a lansquenet guarding the entrance to a casern reminded me of the promise I had made the officer of the peltasts the night before.

   1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XVI, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 151

plural Tyrians

1. Person from Tyre.