York Rose. Her. The white rose of the family of York. (See Fig. [589].)
Yorkshire Grit. A stone used for polishing marble and engravers’ copper plates.
Ypres Lace is the finest and most costly kind of Valenciennes.
Yu, Chinese. (1) A hard and heavy stone, supposed to be a kind of agate which was used for the ancient musical instrument KING, which was a kind of harmonicon made of slabs of sonorous stone of different sizes. (2) An ancient name for a curious wind instrument of high antiquity, which is still in use and is now called cheng. It consists of a number of tubes placed in a calabash, or bowl, and blown into through a long curved tube.
Yucatan. A province of Mexico remarkable for its architectural monuments of a forgotten civilization, described by Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. (See Mexican Architecture.)
Yufts. A kind of Russia leather, red and soft, with a pleasant smell.
Yule, O. E. Christmas time.
Z.
The initials Z and S and Z and C frequently interchange, especially in old words derived from the German, as zither, cither; zentner, centner, &c. The German Z is pronounced ts.
Zaba, Zava. An Arabic cuirass. (Meyrick.)