IVORY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ivory mean? 

• IVORY (noun)
  The noun IVORY has 2 senses:

1. a hard smooth ivory colored dentine that makes up most of the tusks of elephants and walruses

2. a shade of white the color of bleached bones

  Familiarity information: IVORY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IVORY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A hard smooth ivory colored dentine that makes up most of the tusks of elephants and walruses

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Synonyms:

ivory; tusk

Hypernyms ("ivory" is a kind of...):

dentin; dentine (a calcareous material harder and denser than bone that comprises the bulk of a tooth)

Holonyms ("ivory" is a substance of...):

tusk (a long pointed tooth specialized for fighting or digging; especially in an elephant or walrus or hog)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A shade of white the color of bleached bones

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

bone; ivory; off-white; pearl

Hypernyms ("ivory" is a kind of...):

white; whiteness (the quality or state of the achromatic color of greatest lightness (bearing the least resemblance to black))

 Context examples 

The color is pure white or sometimes light ivory.

(Maltese, NCI Thesaurus)

As he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It was one of those small sealing-wax knives to be found on old-fashioned writing-tables, with an ivory handle and a stiff blade.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Yet as demand grew from the 12th century onwards, the research team discovered that Europe’s ivory supply shifted almost exclusively to tusks from the western lineage.

(Lost Norse of Greenland fuelled the medieval ivory trade, ancient walrus DNA suggests, University of Cambridge)

Walrus ivory was once a luxury in high demand and was widely traded in the Viking Age and across Medieval Europe.

(Extinction of Icelandic walrus coincides with Norse settlement, National Science Foundation)

I ravaged Miss Mills's work-box for a smelling-bottle, and in my agony of mind applied an ivory needle-case instead, and dropped all the needles over Dora.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Kindly raise that small ivory box with its assistance.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Well, it is a vegetable ivory palm, and they run to about fifty or sixty feet.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Thanks to good brother Bartholomew, I carve in wood and in ivory, and can do something also in silver and in bronze.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I saw Jim’s face as if it had been carved out of ivory, with his parted lips and his staring eyes fixed upon the black square of the stair opening.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)