a. and sb. [ad. L. type *lacrimātōrius, f. lacrimāre: see prec.]
A. adj. Of or pertaining to tears; tending to cause a flow of tears. Of a vase: Intended to contain tears.
a. 1849. Poe, Loss of Breath, Wks. 1864, IV. 303. A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possession of my soul.
1851. Hawthorne, Twice-t. Tales, II. xiii. 210. Drinking out of … a lachrymatory vase, or sepulchral urn.
1873. Herschel, Pop. Lect., vii. § 3. 328. The presence in the lacrymatory secretion of extremely minute globular particles of equal size.
B. sb.
1. A vase intended to hold tears; applied by archæologists, with doubtful correctness, to those small phials of glass, alabaster, etc., which are found in ancient Roman tombs.
1658. Sir T. Browne, Hydriot., 23. No … Lachrymatories, or Tear-Bottles attended these rural Urnes.
a. 1711. Ken, Hymnotheo, Poet. Wks. 1721, III. 72. Magdalen’s Tears … her Lachrymatory daily fill’d.
1807. G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. I. iv. 147. There have been dug up here … a Roman lachrymatory, and also a pig of lead.
1842. Carlyle, in Mem. Ld. Tennyson (1897), I. 214. There is in me what would fill whole Lachrymatories, as I read.
2. humorously. A pocket-handkerchief.
1825. New Monthly Mag., XIII. 208. Women will be stationed in the pit with white cambric lachrymatories, to exchange for those which have become saturated with the tender tears of sympathy.
1844. Fraser’s Mag., XXX. 331/1. Our lachrymals were unhumected, our lachrymatories never called into requisition.
