[L. sordēs (pl., rare and defective in sing.), filth, uncleanness, etc., related to sordēre to be dirty or foul. Cf. SORDS.]
Construed either as singular or plural.
1. Dirt, filth; foul or feculent matter; refuse or rubbish removed or separated by or during the treatment, manufacture or working of something.
1640. Bp. Reynolds, Passions, xv. 139. A Sink by an house makes all the house the cleaner, because the Sordes are cast into that.
1657. J. Watts, A Scribe & his Let. Answ., Pref. Ep. p. x. You have your eares stuffed and opplete with Kitchin-stuffe and such soyl and sordes.
1758. Borlase, Nat. Hist. Cornw., 179. The sordes, which settles above the tin, is skimmed off.
1766. Smollett, Trav., I. 352. The sordes or dirt falls to the bottom, the oil swims a-top.
c. 1800. State Leslie of Powis (Jam.). The filth, sordes, dregs, or refuse of a distillery or manufactory.
1837. Whittock, Bk. Trades (1842), 435. (Tallow-chandler), The prepared tallow, freed by straining from its ‘sordes,’ its adventitious particles and membranaceous envelopment.
fig. 1660. Trapp, Comm. O. T., III. 515. Such persons chuse to remain in the sordes of their sins.
1780. Bentham, Princ. Legisl., ii. § 6. To cleanse itself from the sordes of its impure original it was necessary it should change its name.
2. Filthy or feculent matter attaching to, or collecting on or in, the bodies of persons or animals.
1670. E. Borlase, Lathom Spaw, 33. In facilitating the passage of the stone and gravel, and abstersing its sordes and minera, I find it very successful.
1790. Phil. Trans., LXXX. 391. In the cancerous, as well as in other malignant ulcers, we frequently meet with a white sordes, which closely adheres to the surface of the sore.
1798. W. Blair, Soldier’s Friend, 77. The copious perspirations … must tend to accumulate filth and sordes upon the skin.
1835. Kirby, Hab. & Inst. Anim., II. xx. 316. The bird-louse is probably useful to birds in devouring the sordes which must accumulate at the root of their plumes.
1843. R. J. Graves, Syst. Clin. Med., x. 107. An emetic clears the stomach of offending matters or sordes.
b. Impure matter collecting about the teeth, gums, etc.; spec. in Path., the foul crusts formed upon the teeth and lips in typhoid or other fevers.
1746. R. James, Introd., in Moufet’s Health’s Improv., 48. Putrid Sordes upon the Lips, Teeth, Tongue, Palate, and Fauces.
1811. Self Instructor, 533. By washing out the gums and natural sordes.
1822–7. Good, Study Med. (1829), II. 242. The lips are furred with a black tenacious sordes.
1876. Bristowe, Th. & Pract. Med. (1878), 109. His lips are dry, black, and probably fissured, his teeth loaded with sordes.
