ColororColour
UK /ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/US /ˈkʌl.ɚ/
Nouncolors
(uncountable)The spectral composition of visible light.
- Humans and birds can perceive color.
- 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.
- What color are your bf's eyes?
- A subset thereof
(uncountable)Hue as opposed to achromatic colors (black, white and grays).
- The accident victim's face was white, drained of all color.
- A subset thereof
(countable, uncountable)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.
- A subset thereof
(countable, uncountable)Any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms, including azure, gules, sable, and vert.
(countable, uncountable)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.
(countable, uncountable)Skin color, noted as normal, jaundiced, cyanotic, flush, mottled, pale, or ashen as part of the skin signs assessment.
Verbcolors, coloring, colored
(transitive)To give something color.
- We could color the walls red.
- 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.
- 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.
(informal)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.
- 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.
Adjective
Conveying color, as opposed to shades of gray.
- Color television and movies were considered a great improvement over black and white.
Example sentences
- The brochure was printed in full colour.
- Please choose a color scheme for the new website.
- There is a great deal of colour in his writing.
- Could you give me some color with regards to which products made up the mix of revenue for this quarter?
- The loss of their colors destroyed the regiment's morale.
- The colors were raised over the new territory.
Usage note
Colour is the British spelling; color the American. The split goes back to Noah Webster, who dropped the u in 1828 to match the Latin root. British English keeps the u in the whole family (colourful, coloured, discolour) but drops it before certain suffixes: colouration is now rare and coloration is standard on both sides of the Atlantic.
Related forms
- colors/colours
- colored/coloured
- colorful/colourful
- coloring/colouring
- watercolor/watercolour
- colorless/colourless
Synonyms and related words
noun a visual attribute of things that results from the light they emit or transmit or reflect
- coloring
noun interest and variety and intensity
- vividness
noun the timbre of a musical sound
- coloration
noun an outward or token appearance or form that is deliberately misleading
- gloss
- semblance
noun any material used for its color
- coloring material
verb add color to
- color in
- colorise
verb affect as in thought or feeling
- distort
- tinge
verb decorate with colors
- emblazon
Word origin
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).