[ad. L. adūst-us pa. pple. of adūr-ĕre: see ADURE. A favorite term of the medical writers of the middle ages; see sense 3, in which it was found in most of the mod. languages. The Fr. aduste (15th c.) may therefore be the immediate source of the Eng.]
1. Scorched, seared; burnt up, calcined; dried up with heat, parched. Also fig.
1550. Bale, Eng. Votaries, II. 41 b. Lyke an adust conscyenced hypocrite.
1623. Rowlandson, Bless. in Blasting, 40. Being burnt, or made adust, by some extraordinary heat of the sunne.
1637. Nabbe, Microcosm., in Dodsl. IX. 124. Provoke me no more; I am adust with rage.
1667. Milton, P. L., XII. 634. With torrid heat, And vapour as the Lybian air adust.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., VI. 179. The Vulgar now and then cure putrid Fevers by taking of adust Wine.
1755. Hales, Distillation, in Phil. Trans., XLIX. 327. Its more disagreeable adust taste.
1854. De Quincey, Revolt. Tartars, Wks. IV. 152. The camels … these arid and adust creatures.
1857. Fraser’s Mag., LVI. 69. African islands … whose desolate and adust beauty sets the imagination all on fire.
2. Of color: Brown, as if scorched by fire, or by the sun; sunburnt.
1596. Nashe, Saffron Walden, 110. Of an adust swarth chollericke dye.
1601. Holland, Pliny (1634), I. 28. Which stone is shewed at this day … carrying a burnt and adust colour.
1678. Lond. Gaz., mcccxxv/4. One Mary, a Leicestershire woman … complection somewhat adust and full faced, run away from [etc.].
c. 1760. Smollett, Ode to Indep., 67. Arabia’s scorching sands he crossed … Conductor of her Tribes adust.
1845. Ford, Handbk. Spain, I. ii. 202. Here everything is adust and tawny, from man to his wife, his horse, his ox or his ass.
3. Applied to a supposed state of the body and its humours, much spoken of in the earlier days of medicine, its alleged symptoms being dryness of the body, heat, thirst, black or burnt color of the blood, and deficiency of serum in it, atrabilious or ‘melancholic’ complexion, etc. Obs. exc. in general sense, atrabilious, sallow, gloomy in features or temperament.
c. 1430. Lydg., Min. Poems (1840), 197. Ay ful of yre, of malys, and rancour, Drye and adust and a gret wastour.
1542. Boorde, Dyetary, xi. (1870), 261. Burnt breade and hard crustes,—doth ingendre color aduste and melancoly humours.
1576. Baker, Gesner’s Jewell of Health, 63 a. Cares of the mynde … of adust flewme engendred. Ibid., 101 a. This purgeth choller adust, and melancholie.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., 335. In Fevers and hot distempers from choler adust is caused a blacknesse in our tongues, teeth and excretions.
1657. Physical Dict. The blood is then said to be adust, when by reason of extraordinary heat the thinner parts are evaporated, and the thicker remain black and dreggy.
1728. Pope, Dunc., II. 33. No meagre muse-rid mope adust and thin.
1820. W. Irving, Sk. Bk., II. 91. That plodding spirit with which men of adust temperament follow up any tract of study.
1880. Athenæum, 27 March, 414. The tall, somewhat adust and worn woman standing by a table.
