Definition of "parchmental"

The Same Woman.—She is the same woman you have had to deal with in your professional career, dear doctor (Gleaner). Has the same begabled frame, the same hooked beak, the same thin, neutral tinted lips, the same parchmental skin, the same supra-lateral nasal mole, the same hammer dressed saw-file voice, the same fearful masculo-feminine vesicatory tout ensemble.

1892, “Items of Interest”, in A[mant] H[enry] Ohmann-Dumesnil, editor, Medical Review. A Weekly Retrospect of Medicine and Surgery., volume XXV, St. Louis, Mo.: Medical Review Association, page 415, column 2

The Egyptologist, seeking for new light, will discover within the parchmental pages of this little papyrus roll, many facts of interest which have not been recorded elsewhere, for instance, the astonishing revelation that even the crowned heads of the ancient lands are just as susceptible to the seductive blandishments and fascinations of that elusive game of chance, known to the initiated as “draw poker,” as are the rulers of our own Republic, who are said to semi-occasionally indulge in this pernicious pastime within the precincts of our own country’s capitol.

1893, “Literary Nuggets”, in The Doctor’s Factotum, page 10, column 1

I do not suffer any more from brain fag. If I feel symptoms of a return of mental vacuity, I take of the hypophosphites and the intellectual jejuneness is immediately suppressed. My only objection to it is, that it creates in me an inordinate, and unseemly rambunctiousness. For a three scorer, who is now little more than a parchmental reminiscence, this is unbefitting.

1896, C., “The Hypophosphites”, in The Medical Gleaner, volume VII, Cincinnati, Oh.: Sullivan Printing Works, pages 61–62

That was the eldest and least parchmental of the sisters, who may, very likely, have been a pretty girl once.

1911 September, John Ayscough [pseudonym; Francis Bickerstaffe-Drew], “Gracechurch Papers. II. Counting Handkerchiefs.”, in The Month, volume CXVIII, page 283

Diagrams geometric, on parchmental scroll; / Circles, ovals, elliptics and such, / He sure figures will tell what is inside the knoll, / And tho far under ground, he’s in touch / With the hidden deposits of mineral ore, / And lost channels ’neath mountains he feels: […]

1916, “Platinum Bill” [pseudonym; Wilfrid Robert Smith], “The Dreamster”, in Under the Northern Lights, Portland, Ore.: The Columbia Printing Co., stanza II, pages 32–33

The atmosphere of parchmental dignity was so oppressing that she bent her knees in a curtsy as soon as she stood before his desk.

1945, S. D. Peech [pseudonym; Sibyl Moholy-Nagy], Children’s Children, New York, N.Y.: H. Bittner and Company, page 186

[…] and remained pale, discolored, parchmental and dry.

1970, Journal of Immunology, volume 104, page 1524

The tendency, in a rootless age with small regard for the elderly (either corporeal or parchmental), is to answer: “No one would or should.”

1987, Richard H. Weisberg, When Lawyers Write, Boston, Mass., Toronto, Ont.: Little, Brown and Company, page 3

Parchmental stand aspens, / Paper atrmeble accepts scars, / Words healing standing parchmental— / There was a sanctity unbuilt, / Unhousable, sung by leaves, / Taken from heartwood, present.

1993, Don W. Jenkins, “Aspens”, in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, volume 26, page 92

We performed the crossing of uni- and polyovulate plants by manual hybridization with preliminary emasculation and then placed the pollen in the emasculated flowers following isolation by parchmental isolators.

1995, Russian Journal of Genetics, volume 31, page 50