Mordant

(mor'dant.) [From L. mor deo, I gnaw.] (Dyeing.) A substance which has chemical affinity for both the coloring-matter and the cloth to be dyed, and is, as it were, a bond of union between them. When that which has to be dyed has little or no attraction for the matter on which the color depends, so as not to be capable either of abstracting it from its solvent, or of retaining it with such tenacity as to form a permanent dye, then some intermediate substance is used, which is capable of uniting them; such a substance is call eda M. Sometimes the M. modifies the color; and the colors imparted by some dye - stuffs depend on the M. with which they are a ociated. Of all the bases, those which succeed best as M. are alumina, tin, and oxide of iron. More, SIR THOMAS, an English statesman and philosopher, B. in London, 1480, after graduating at Oxford, studied law at Lincoln's Inn, and, after entering Parliament, obtained the favor of Henry VIII., who in 1529 made him Lord High Chancellor of the kingdom, which office he resigned in 1532, on account of his opposition to the divorce of Queen Catherine. Two years later he was committed to the Tower, tried on a vamped-up charge of high treason, and suffered on the block on Tower Hill, 1535. His famous philosophical fiction, Utopia, is a work still regarded as an English [s. 617]