wannish

comparative more wannish · superlative most wannish

1. poeticQuite wan or pale.

   Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire / Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar: [...]

   1819, John Keats, “Lamia”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, →OCLC, part I, page 6

   5 more examples

   No tree in all the grove but has its charms, / Though each its hue peculiar; paler ſome, / And of a wanniſh grey; […]

   1785, William Cowper, “Book I. The Sofa.”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], →OCLC, page 17

   Morning arises stormy and pale, / No sun, but a wannish glare / In fold upon fold of hueless cloud, / And the budded peaks of the wood are bow’d /Caught and cuff’d by the gale: / I had fancied it would be fair.

   1855, Alfred Tennyson, “Maud”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, part VI, stanza 1, page 24

   The moon turns the smoke into wannish clouds of white and yellow, which slowly rise, break, and disappear.

   1890, Hezekiah Butterworth, The Log Schoolhouse on the Columbia: A Tale of the Pioneers of the Great Northwest

   Sheer slanting down the sky an opal light / Pierces the snow-blur's veil of wannish gray, / In iridescent sheen, tingeing the dazzling white / With amethystine, gold or beryl ray.

   1900, Leigh Gordon Giltner, The Path of Dreams

   [G]arishly enough they [gas jets] glared there, transparently wannish as it were shamed, like blinking night-things surprised by the brilliance of day, they having so flared and stared for months, or years, inasmuch as they were now blazing diminished, with streaks and rays in the flame, as if by effort: […]

   1901, M[atthew] P[hipps] Shiel, The Purple Cloud, New York, N.Y.: Vanguard Press, published 1930, →OCLC, page 85