color

adjective

No English definition recorded for this entry.

L335441 on Wikidata ↗

verb

to give color

L791 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /ˈkʌl.ə/ / /ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/ / [ˈkʰʌl.ə(ɹ)]

adj

Etymology: From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color. Doublet of couleur. Largely 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. 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).

Conveying color, as opposed to shades of gray.
“Color television and movies were considered a great improvement over black and white.”
“I took my TV over on the first trip. I got a beauty. It's four years old, color, but when I had a little snow and asked the repairman to come in, he told me never, never turn this set in for a new one.”

noun

The spectral composition of visible light.
“Humans and birds can perceive color.”
A subset thereof:
“Most languages have names for the colors black, white, red, and green.”
“What color are your bf's eyes?”
A subset thereof:
“The accident victim's face was white, drained of all color.”
A subset thereof:
“This film is broadcast in color. Most people dream in color, but some dream in black and white.”
A subset thereof:
A paint.
“The artist took out her colors and began work on a landscape.”
Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity.
“Color has been a sensitive issue in many societies.”
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.
“[…] 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.”
Richness of expression; detail or flavour that is likely to generate interest or enjoyment.
“color commentator”
“color commentary”
A standard, flag, or insignia:
“The loss of their colors destroyed the regiment's morale.”
A standard, flag, or insignia:
“The colors were raised over the new territory.”
“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.”
A standard, flag, or insignia:
“Both of the perpetrators were wearing colors.”
An award for sporting achievement, particularly within a school or university.
“He was awarded colors for his football.”
The morning ceremony of raising the flag.
A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons; color charge.
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.
The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia )
Any of the colored balls excluding the reds.
A front or facade; an ostensible truth actually false; pretext.
“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.”
“They held possession under color of title.”
Gold, particles of gold found when prospecting.
“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.”
To bleed, either through injury or blading. Usually prefaced with "get".
“The local hero is getting color in tonight's spectacle.”
Timbre, often in relation to orchestration.
“In other words, Brahms saves the higher violin color for the more important foreground statement and assigns the soft swirling background to middle-register violins and violas, while the cellos dominate in their best voice.”
The quality of a particular vowel sound.

verb

To give something color.
“We could color the walls red.”
To give something color.
To apply colors to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using colored markers or crayons.
“My kindergartener loves to color.”
To become red through increased blood flow.
“Her face colored as she realized her mistake.”
To affect without completely changing.
“That interpretation certainly colors my perception of the book.”
To attribute a quality to; to portray (as).
“Color me confused.”
“They tried to colour the industrial unrest as a merely local matter.”
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.”
To affect the quality of a speech sound, especially a vowel.
“Many languages have a "neutral", roughly central vowel like /a/ or /ə/ which can be colored to a back, rounded vowel like [o] by an adjacent labialized consonant, or to a front, unrounded vowel like [e] by an adjacent palatalized consonant.”
“The Proto-Indo-European laryngeal *h₂ often colors the neutral vowel *e with an a-like quality, while *h₃ results in a more o-like quality; *h₁ has no coloring effect.”