A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
foxed
Foxed describes paper marked with the small rust-brown spots that appear on old books, prints, and maps, usually scattered across the margins and the endpapers. The spots come from mold growing in damp paper and iron impurities in the pulp oxidizing.
Etymology
Comes from the reddish brown of a fox. English also uses the animal foxy for a red-brown coat and in the horse color sorrel, which came in from French for the same shade. The unrelated foxed, meaning baffled, comes from the critter as cunning.