brimstone

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The sulfur of hell; hell, damnation.

   For griefe thereof, and diuelish despight, / From his infernall fournace forth he threw / Huge flames, that dimmed all the heauens light, / Enrold in duskish smoke and brimstone blew.

2. 2
   noun

   Sulfur.

   Weel I wot I wad be broken if I were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper and brimstone, and suchlike sweetmeats.

3. 3
   noun

   A whore.

   I went to the park, picked up a low Brimstone, called myself a Barber, & agreed with her for Sixpence, went to the bottom of the park, arm in arm, & dipped my machine in the Canal […].

4. 4
   noun

   Used attributively as an intensifier in exclamations.

   You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!

5. 5
   noun

   an old name for sulfur

6. 6
   noun

   The butterfly Gonepteryx rhamni of the Pieridae family.

7. 7
   noun

   Online content of exceptionally poor quality, lower than coal.

Etymology

From Middle English brymston, brimston, bremston, forms of brinston, brenston, bernston, from Old English brynstān (“brimstone”, literally “burn-stone”), equivalent to brian + stone, or burn + stone. Cognate with Scots brunstane (“brimstone”), Icelandic brennisteinn (“sulfur / sulphur, brimstone”), German Bernstein (“amber”). Compare also brimfire. More at burn, stone. Although once a synonym for sulfur, the word is now largely restricted to poetic and Biblical usage.