albescent

Updated: May 17, 2025

And is this a ducal hand, white as the albescent down of the eider-duck, which presses mine with a tender touch, so haughty and so delicately graduated to my standing as "friend" of the exquisite Honoria? It was too much; I could have wept; my senses rather failed.

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 09, July, 1858