Also bister. [a. F. bistre, in same sense: see below.] A brown pigment prepared from common soot; the color of this.
1727–51. Chambers, Cycl., Bister, or Bistre, among painters … a colour made of chimney-soot boiled, and afterwards diluted with water.
1808. Southey, Lett. (1856), II. 58. One set, of six folios, is lettered in gold upon bister.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xlix. (1856), 467. A dark sky, something between the bistre of the frost-smoke and the indigo of our thunder clouds at home.
b. attrib. and in comb.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxix. (1856), 241. The frost-smoke is all around us in bistre-colored vapor.
1862. Thornbury, Turner, I. 79. Published in aqua-tinta, in imitation of bistre or India-ink drawings.
1881. Nature, XXIII. 223.
[In form, bistre comes near to a series of Teutonic words, ON. bistr angry, knitting one’s brows, Sw., Da bister angry, fierce, raging, grim, Du. bijster bewildered, LG. biester having lost one’s way; also ‘dark, dismal, gloomy’ Flügel. Of these Franck takes the Flemish bijstier as apparently the most etymological form, and would refer it to an OTeut. *bi-stiuri with the notion of ‘deranged, disturbed, amazed.’ If this be the derivation, these words can hardly be related to the Fr. bistre, as they might be if ‘gloomy, dark’ were the radical notion. Mr. H. Bradley compares Of. behistre, beīstre, var. of besistre bissextile, meaning, 1. the bissextile day in February, 2. unlucky event, disaster, calamity. 3. ‘a horrible storm or tempest in the aire’ (Cotgr.); whence the notions of ‘dismal, gloomy, grim, raging, etc.’ might be plausibly derived; but historical evidence as to connection between the various words is wanting.]
