[app. altered from the earlier TINCT, which may already have been so pronounced; but It. tinta tint, hue, may have influenced the technical use in painting.]
1. A color, hue, usually slight or delicate; a tinge; esp. one of the several lighter or deeper shades or varieties, or degrees of intensity, of the same color: see quots. 1848–79 in sense 2.
1717. Pope, Epist. to Mr. Jervas, 5. Whether thy hand strike out some free design,… Or blend in beauteous tint the colour’d mass.
1754. Gray, Pleasure, 42. Chastised by sabler tints of woe.
1798. Wordsw., Thorn, v. Ah me! what lovely tints are there Of olive green and scarlet bright.
1834. Mrs. Somerville, Connex. Phys. Sc., xxxvi. 387. Exhibiting all the variety of tints that indicates the changes of combustion.
1838. T. Thomson, Chem. Org. Bodies, 516. It is nearly colourless, having only a slight tint of yellow.
1878. Dale, Lect. Preach., v. 128. Autumn tints of brown and gold.
b. fig. in various senses; esp. Quality, character, kind; a slight imparted or modifying character, a ‘tinge’ of something.
1760. Sterne, Serm., xix. Each one lends it something of its own complexional tint and character. Ibid. (1768), Sent. Journ., Passport, Hotel at Paris. Liberty!… No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle.
1817. Byron, Manfred, III. ii. Our inborn spirits have a tint of thee.
1825. Jefferson, Autobiog., Wks. 1859, I. 114. His virtue was of the purest tint.
1901. Empire Rev., I. 369. In New South Wales … free trade was the dominant tint [at the election].
2. spec. a. Painting: see quots. Middle tint, prime tint: see MIDDLE a. 6, PRIME a. 9 a.
1753. Hogarth, Anal. Beauty, xiii. 179. Light and shades … become, as it were, our materials, of which prime tints are the principal. By these I mean the fixed and permanent colours of each object, as the green of trees, &c.
1784. J. Barry, in Lect. Paint., v. (1848), 183. The middle tint, or intermediate passage between the two masses of light and dark.
1848. Wornum, ibid., 211, note. Although there are but three primitive colours, painters have nine. These are yellow, red, blue,… orange, purple, green,… russet, olive, citrine…. All other gradations of colour are mere tints of the above; dark or light, according as they are mixed with black or white, or according to the proportions in which they are compounded. Thus the variety of tints is infinite.
1859. Gullick & Timbs, Paint., 8, note. Tints differ from each other in being simply lighter or darker, but hues differ in colour. Ibid. In ordinary usage, however, by ‘tints’ we frequently mean colours generally, and the word is often substituted for ‘hues.’
1879. Pole, in Nature, 6 Nov., 15/2, note. In technical language mixtures of a colour with white are called tints, with black, shades.
b. Engraving. The effect produced by a series of fine parallel lines more or less closely drawn so as to produce an even and uniform shading.
Crossed tint, one produced by lines crossing at right angles. Ruled tint, one produced by a single series of parallel lines. Safety tint, that used on bills of exchange, cheques, etc., either as a ground of the whole surface, or specially on the parts which have to be completed in writing, as a security against alterations.
1880. Print. Trades Jrnl., xxxv. 6. Worked in black, and light tints, on a stone coloured paper.
3. attrib. and Comb., as tint work; tint-block, a block of wood or metal hatched with fine parallel lines suitable for printing tints; tint-drawing, drawing in diluted shades of various colors, or in one color so that the gradations are produced by washes of pigment; tint-tool, an implement used for hatching or graving a tint-block.
1869. Eng. Mech., 10 Dec., 298/3. Tint-tools.
1873. E. Spon, Workshop Receipts, Ser. I. 147/1. The parallel lines forming an even and uniform tint, as in the representation of a clear sky, are obtained by what is called the tint-tool.
1884. St. James’ Gaz., 24 Oct., 7/1. Mr. Linton … draws an emphatic distinction between wood-cutting … and wood-engraving, or white-line tint-work.
1897. Daily News, 23 April, 6/5. Mr. Thorne Waite, though he has several large drawings, is seen to most advantage in tint works, such as the View over Romney Marsh (No. 191), which is of very high quality, and in which he escapes from that violence of contrast between the brightness of his skies and the darkness of his foregrounds—his besetting sin.
