camboge

Noun

gamboge (countable and uncountable, plural gamboges)

1. Any of several species of trees of the genus Garcinia found in South and Southeastern Asia, especially Garcinia xanthochymus.
   • Clusiaceæ, or Guttiferæ, a natural order of trees or shrubs belonging to the Dicotyledons (division Thalamifloræ), natives of the humid tropics of S. America. [...] Most of the plants have acrid properties, and yield a yellow resin. Among the chief and common plants of the order are Gambooge...1877, “Clusiaceæ, or Guttiferæ”, in John M[erry] Ross, editor, The Globe Encyclopædia of Universal Information, volume II, Boston, Mass.: Estes & Lauriat, […], →OCLC, page 178, column 2

   Synonyms:

   cambogia

2. The resin of the gamboge tree; a preparation of the resin used as a pigment or for medicinal purposes.
   • Gamboge is one of the firſt yellows, which may be made to produce five or six ſorts of Green with verdegreaſe, according as the gambooge is in the greater or leſſer proportion; if it abounds, it will make a tolerable oak green, and being mixt with a greater quantity of verdegreaſe, it will make a...1735, [John Barrow], “GREENS”, in Dictionarium Polygraphicum: Or, The Whole Body of Arts Regularly Digested. […], volume I (A–H), London: […] C[harles] Hitch and C[harles] Davis […], and S[amuel]...
3. A deep yellow colour.
   • I have always heard, and red, that Nature is one of the chief beauties of poetry; and lo! behold an example!—for I merely turned into rhyme the pitiful ravings of two love-lorn maids, most tenderly sensible to the charms of a pair of black moustachios relieved with deep gamboges.1811 October, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, W[illiam] K[irkpatrick] R[iland] Bedford, “C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe to Lord Gower”, in Alexander Allardyce, editor, Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick...

See all 4 meanings of gamboge