A stain is a discoloration that can be clearly distinguished from the surface, material, or medium it is found upon. They are caused by the chemical or physical interaction of two dissimilar materials. Staining is used for biochemical research, metal staining, and art (e.g., wood staining, stained glass).
Read more about Stain: Types of Stains, Formation, Properties, Removal
Famous quotes containing the word stain:
“As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtlest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red stain “hangings,”
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“It is extraordinary how the house and the simplest possessions of someone who has been left become so quickly sordid.... Even the stain on the coffee cup seems not coffee but the physical manifestation of one’s inner stain, the fatal blot that from the beginning had marked one for ultimate aloneness.”
—Coleman Dowell (1925–1985)