a. and sb. [f. as prec. + -INE. Cf. F. levantin (masc.), -ine (fem.).]
A. adj. Of or pertaining to the Levant; † in early use, pertaining to the east, eastern. Also, recalling or resembling the manners of the Levantines. Of a vessel: Trading to the Levant.
1649. Jer. Taylor, Gt. Exemp., I. § 4. 43. This star did not trouble Herod till the Levantine princes expounded the mysteriousnesse of it.
1664. Evelyn, Sylva, xxii. 58. [The seeds of the Platanus] should be gather’d late in Autumn, and brought us from some more Levantine parts then Italy.
1784. Cowper, Task, III. 583. Those Ausonia claims, Levantine regions these.
a. 1844. Campbell, Spectre Boat, iii. Where Mount Ætna lights the deep Levantine sea.
1897. Daily News, 23 Sept., 8/3. I must say that his [Bourbaki’s] manner was very Levantine.
1900. Speaker, 3 March, 599/1. Even in the days of Thomas Cromwell a Duke of Norfolk would own Levantine merchantmen.
B. sb.
1. An inhabitant or native of the Levant.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Levantines, the Natives or Inhabitants of the Levant, the Eastern People; also those that are employed on the Mediterranean.
1821. Byron, Don Juan, III. xxix. The Pyrrhic dance so martial, To which the Levantines are very partial.
1844. Kinglake, Eöthen, xviii. (1864), 221. Europeans settled in the East, and commonly called Levantines.
1897. Daily News, 23 Sept., 8/3. A Levantine in blood, he [Bourbaki] instinctively understood how to appeal to the imagination of the Arabs.
2. [F. levantine.] (See quot. 1882.)
1831. G. R. Porter, Silk Manuf., 298. Levantine is a stout, close-made, and twilled silk.
1835. Court Mag., VI. 1/2. Tigrine is a levantine of the very richest kind, spotted like a tiger’s skin.
1882. Caulfeild & Saward, Dict. Needlework, Levantine, a very rich-faced stout twilled black silk material, exceedingly soft, and of excellent wear. Its face and back show different shades; if the former be a blue-black, the latter will be a jet and vice versâ.
