Definition of "sable"

Lovers dallied upon divans spread with sables.

1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015

I ſee its Sables wove by Deſtiny.

1745, [Edward Young], “Night the Ninth and Last. The Consolation. Containing, among Other Things, I. A Moral Survey of the Nocturnal Heavens. II. A Night-Address to the Deity. […]”, in The Complaint: Or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, London: […] [Samuel Richardson] for A[ndrew] Millar […], and R[obert] Dodsley […], published 1750, page 295

[…] a delighted shout from the children swung him toward the door again. His sister, Mrs. Gerard, stood there in carriage gown and sables, radiant with surprise. ¶ "Phil! You! Exactly like you, Philip, to come strolling in from the antipodes—dear fellow!" recovering from the fraternal embrace and holding both lapels of his coat in her gloved hands.

1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company

When I behold the violet past prime,And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white

1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 12”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, / In rayless majesty, now stretches forth / Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.

1742, [Edward Young], “Night the”, in The Complaint, London: […]

They wound between the wagons to a tent removed from the rest of the traders'. It was crimson at the top and sable at the bottom, with thin triangles of colors stabbing into each other.

2002, Christopher Paolini, chapter 3, in Eragon

She turned and waved a hand to him, she cried a word, but he didn't hear it, it was a lost word. A sable wraith she was in the parkland, fading away into the dolorous crypt of winter.

1922, Michael Arlen, “3/2/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days‎

Some of the sable females, who formerly stood aloof, now began to relax and appear less coy; but my heart was still fixed on London, where I hoped to be ere long.

1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 7, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I

Ethnologists are in the wrong / About our sable brothers[.]

1880 June 19, Henry Kendall, “My Piccaninny”, in The Australian Town and Country Journal, page 28, column 4

Of this one of the drovers writes thus: - "Very soon there will be homesteads and stations dotted all over the Territory within easy distances of one another, driving our sable brethren from their ancient hunting grounds."

1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 281

For twelve long months I had to pace, / Humping my swag with a cadging face, / Sleeping in the bush, like the sable race.

1905, Banjo Paterson, Old Bush Songs, page 40