color
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: colôr
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Alternative forms
- colour (Commonwealth, Ireland) (see the usage notes below)
Etymology
From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color.
Displaced English blee, Middle English blee (“color”), from Old English blēo. Also partially replaced Old English hīew (“color”) and its descendants (English hue), which is less often used in this sense. Doublet of couleur.
The spelling color was popularized in modern American English by Noah Webster, to match the spelling of the word's Latin etymon, and make all American spellings of the derivatives consistent (colorimeter, coloration, colorize, colorless, etc).
Pronunciation
- (General American) enPR: kŭlʹər, IPA(key): /ˈkʌl.ɚ/
Audio (General American): (file)
- (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kŭlʹə, IPA(key): /ˈkʌl.ə/
- (Northern England) enPR: ko͝olʹə, IPA(key): /ˈkʊl.ə/
- (Scotland, Northern Ireland) enPR: kŭlʹər, IPA(key): /ˈkʌləɹ/
- (Ireland) enPR: ko͝olʹər, IPA(key): /ˈkʊləɹ/
- Rhymes: -ʌlə(ɹ)
- Homophone: culler
- Hyphenation: col‧or
Noun
color (countable and uncountable, plural colors) (American spelling) (Canadian spelling, rare)
- (uncountable) The spectral composition of visible light.
- Humans and birds can perceive color.
- Synonym: (archaic) blee
- A subset thereof:
- (countable) A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class.
- Most languages have names for the colors black, white, red, and green.
- Synonyms: hue, (archaic) blee
- 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
- Here, in the transept and choir, where the service was being held, one was conscious every moment of an increasing brightness; colours glowing vividly beneath the circular chandeliers, and the rows of small lights on the choristers' desks flashed and sparkled in front of the boys' faces, deep linen collars, and red neckbands.
- (uncountable) Hue as opposed to achromatic colors (black, white and grays).
- These hues as used in color television or films, color photographs, etc (as opposed to the shades of grey used in black-and-white television).
- This film is broadcast in color. Most people dream in color, but some dream in black and white.
- Synonym: color television
- (heraldry) Any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms, including azure, gules, sable, and vert.
- (countable) A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class.
- A paint.
- The artist took out her colors and began work on a landscape.
- (uncountable) Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity.
- Color has been a sensitive issue in many societies.
- Synonyms: complexion, ethnicity, race
- (medicine) Skin color, noted as normal, jaundiced, cyanotic, flush, mottled, pale, or ashen as part of the skin signs assessment.
- A flushed appearance of blood in the face; redness of complexion.
- 1864, Sir Henry Stewart Cunningham, Late Laurels, volumes 1-2, page 117:
- […] her very embarrassment wore a graceful air; her high colour had softened down to a warm, delicate tint; and her dress, which looked beautifully new and fresh, was in good taste, and showed her off to advantage.
- (figuratively) Richness of expression; detail or flavour that is likely to generate interest or enjoyment.
- There is a great deal of colour in his writing.
- a bit of local color
- 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), page 377, column 2:
- Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local color) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust […]
- Could you give me some color with regards to which products made up the mix of revenue for this quarter?
- A standard, flag, or insignia:
- (in the plural) A standard or banner.
- (in the plural) The flag of a nation or team.
- The colors were raised over the new territory.
- 1856, “Treaty signed April 18, 1855; ratified April 5, 1856”, in Treaty of friendship and commerce between Great Britain and Siam, Bangkok: J. H. Chandler, page 7:
- The arrival of the British Consul at Bangkok shall not take place before the ratification of this Treaty, nor until ten vessels owned by British subjects, sailing under British colours and with British papers, shall have entered the port of Bangkok for purposes of trade, subsequent to the signing of this Treaty.
- (in the plural) Gang insignia.
- Both of the perpetrators were wearing colors.
- (in the plural) An award for sporting achievement, particularly within a school or university.
- He was awarded colors for his football.
- (military, in the plural) The morning ceremony of raising the flag.
- (physics) A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons; color charge.
- (finance, uncountable) A third-order measure of derivative price sensitivity, expressed as the rate of change of gamma with respect to time, or equivalently the rate of change of charm with respect to changes in the underlying asset price.
- (typography) The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See
type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ) - (snooker) Any of the colored balls excluding the reds.
- A front or facade; an ostensible truth actually false; pretext.
- 2011, David Baldacci, The Collectors:
- At the far end of the continuum, Roger Seagraves collected personal items from people he'd murdered, or assassinated rather, since he'd done it under the color of serving his country.
- An appearance of right or authority; color of law.
- Under color of law, he managed to bilk taxpayers of millions of dollars.
- 1882, The Ohio Law Journal, volume 2, page 396:
- The only thing which this defendant is accused of doing is that he excluded this boy from the school, and he did it under the color of the statute relating to the subject, and did it because he was a colored boy.
- (mining) Gold, particles of gold found when prospecting.
- 2013, Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries, London: Granta, published 2014, →ISBN, page 184:
- He smelted Wells’s colour before it was valued, and by the time anybody saw it, it had been poured into bars and stamped with the Reserve seal.
Usage notes
The late Anglo-Norman colour, which is the standard UK spelling, has been the usual spelling in Britain since the 14th century and was chosen by Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755) along with other Anglo-Norman spellings such as favour, honour, etc. The Latin spelling color was occasionally used from the 15th century onward, mainly due to Latin influence; it was lemmatized by Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), along with favor, honor, etc., and is currently the standard US spelling.
In Canada, colour is preferred, but color is not unknown; in Australia, -our endings are the standard, although -or endings had some currency in the past and are still sporadically found in some regions. In New Zealand and South Africa, -our endings are the standard.
Synonyms
- (measure of derivative price sensitivity): colour, DgammaDtime, gamma decay
Hypernyms
- (measure of derivative price sensitivity): Greeks (includes list of coordinate terms)
Hyponyms
Derived terms
The majority of these terms are either considered alternative forms of, or have alternative forms corresponding to, colour (the Commonwealth and Irish spelling).
- anticolor
- bicolor
- bodycolor
- colorability
- color analyst
- color announcer
- color banding
- color bar
- colorbearer
- colorblind
- color blind
- color-blind
- color blindness
- colorbreed
- colorburst
- colorcast
- color charge
- color code
- color-code
- color coded
- color-coded
- color commentator
- color compass
- color confinement
- color coordinate
- color-coordinate
- color coordinate system
- color coordination
- color depth
- colored
- color fade
- colorfast
- colorfastness
- color field
- color-flavor
- color-flavor locking
- color font
- color force
- colorful
- color grading
- color guard
- coloriferous
- colorification
- Colorify
- colorimeter
- colorimetry
- colorine
- colorisation
- colorise
- coloriser
- colorism
- colorist
- coloristic
- colorization
- colorize
- colorizer
- color killer
- colorless
- color line
- colormaker
- colormaking
- colorman
- color man
- colormap
- color me
- color-octet
- color of authority
- color of law
- color of office
- color of someone's money
- color of title
- colorogenic
- colorologist
- colorology
- coloron
- colorous
- color pencil
- colorphobia
- colorphobic
- color photography
- color pigeon
- color pop
- color-proud
- color proud
- colorpuncture
- color revolution
- color screw
- color-screw
- colorsome
- color space
- color story
- color-struck
- color television
- color temperature
- color timing
- color triangle
- color TV
- colortype
- color war
- colorway
- color wheel
- colorwise
- colorwork
- complementary color
- discolor
- discoloration
- duocolor
- false-color
- Finlaycolor
- flame-color
- flesh-colored
- flying colors
- forecolor
- four color
- four color theorem
- full color
- give color to
- grapheme-color
- haircolor
- horse of a different color
- hyperbolic color
- hypercolor
- in color
- in flying colors
- in living color
- intercolor
- lend color to
- monocolor
- multicolor
- multicolored
- multicolors
- noncolor
- of color
- off-color
- pair of colors
- pentacolor
- person of color
- prismatic colors
- pseudocolor
- quadricolor
- quincolor
- rainbow color
- rainbow-colored
- real-color
- show one's true colors
- spot color
- sulfur-color
- Technicolor
- technicolored
- The Color Purple
- tone color
- topcolor
- tricolor
- Tricolor
- troop the color
- true-color
- true colors
- turn one's color
- type color
- uncolor
- undercolor
- unicolor
- unicolored
- watercolor
- wax-color
- what color is the sun in your world
- what color is your Bugatti
- with flying colors
Translations
spectral composition of visible light
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particular set of the visible spectrum
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hue as opposed to achromatic colors
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human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity
|
interest, especially in a selective area
any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms
|
standard or banner (colors)
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
|
Adjective
color (not comparable) (American spelling)
- Conveying color, as opposed to shades of gray.
- Color television and movies were considered a great improvement over black and white.
Translations
conveying color
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Verb
color (third-person singular simple present colors, present participle coloring, simple past and past participle colored) (American spelling)
- (transitive) To give something color.
- (transitive) To cause (a pipe, especially a meerschaum) to take on a brown or black color, by smoking.
- (intransitive) To apply colors to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using colored markers or crayons.
- Synonym: color in
- My kindergartener loves to color.
- (of a person or their face) To become red through increased blood flow.
- Synonym: blush
- Her face colored as she realized her mistake.
- To affect without completely changing.
- (informal) To attribute a quality to; to portray (as).
- Synonym: call
- Color me confused.
- They tried to colour the industrial unrest as a merely local matter.
- (mathematics, graph theory) To assign colors to the vertices of a graph (or the regions of a map) so that no two vertices connected by an edge (regions sharing a border) have the same color.
- Can this graph be 2-colored?
- You can color any map with four colors.
Antonyms
Hyponyms
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
give something color
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draw using crayons
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become red through increased blood flow
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affect without completely changing
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
See also
| Colors/Colours in English (layout · text) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| red | orange | yellow | green | blue (incl. indigo; cyan, teal, turquoise) |
purple / violet | |
| pink (including magenta) |
brown | white | gray/grey | black | ||
Further reading
- “color”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- Color (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Category:Colors on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
Anagrams
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
color f
References
- Bal Palazios, Santiago (2002) “color”, in Dizionario breu de a luenga aragonesa, Zaragoza, →ISBN
- “color”, in Aragonario, diccionario aragonés–castellano (in Spanish)
Alternative forms
Etymology
Inherited from Latin color, colōrem.
Noun
color m (plural colores)
Related terms
Etymology
Inherited from Latin colōrem. Compare Occitan color, French couleur.
Pronunciation
Noun
color m or (archaic, regional or poetic) f (plural colors)
Derived terms
- acolorir
- color cru
- color d'ala de mosca
- color de catxumbo
- color de gos com fuig
- color de merda d'oca
- color primari
- colorar
- escala de color
See also
| blanc | gris | negre |
| roig, vermell; carmesí | taronja; marró | groc; crema |
| verd llima | verd | |
| cian; xarxet | atzur | blau |
| violat; indi | magenta; lila, porpra | rosa |
Further reading
- “color” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
- “color”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2024
- “color” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
- “color” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.
Alternative forms
Etymology
Inherited from Old Galician-Portuguese color, alternative form of coor, perhaps from an older forms collor (compare Asturian collor and color), from Latin color, colōrem.
Pronunciation
Noun
color f (plural colores)
- color / colour, hue
- 1295, R. Lorenzo, La traducción gallega de la Crónica General y de la Crónica de Castilla, Ourense: I.E.O.P.F., page 745:
- diz que apareçeu ẽno çeo hũa cruz, que era de muytas colores et muy fremosa; et teuerõna os cristãos por muy boo sinal
- he says that a cross appeared in the sky, which was of many colors and very beauty; and the Christians considered it a very good sign
- flush (suffusion of the face with blood)
Derived terms
References
- Ernesto Xosé González Seoane, María Álvarez de la Granja, Ana Isabel Boullón Agrelo (2006–2022) “color”, in Dicionario de Dicionarios do galego medieval (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
- Xavier Varela Barreiro, Xavier Gómez Guinovart (2006–2018) “color”, in Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: ILG
- Xavier Varela Barreiro, Xavier Gómez Guinovart (2006–2018) “collor”, in Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: ILG
- Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, editor (2006–2013), “color”, in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega [Dictionary of Dictionaries of the Galician language] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
- Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, Ernesto Xosé González Seoane, María Álvarez de la Granja, editors (2003–2018), “color”, in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
- Rosario Álvarez Blanco, editor (2014–2024), “cor”, in Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega, →ISSN
Pronunciation
Noun
color m (apocopated)
Anagrams
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