Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun etc. See color, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Brit. See color.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable The spectral composition of visible light
  • noun countable A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class; blee.
  • noun uncountable Hue as opposed to achromatic colours (black, white and greys).
  • noun uncountable Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity.
  • noun figuratively Interest, especially in a selective area.
  • noun heraldry Any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms, including azure, gules, sable, and vert. Contrast with metal.
  • noun in the plural A standard or banner.
  • noun The system of colour television.
  • noun in the plural An award for sporting achievement, particularly within a school or university.
  • noun In corporate finance, details on sales, profit margins, or other financial figures, especially while reviewing quarterly results when an officer of a company is speaking to investment analysts.
  • noun physics A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons.
  • noun typography The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page.
  • noun snooker Any of the colored balls excluding the reds.
  • noun A front or facade: an ostensible truth actually false.
  • noun An appearance of right or authority.
  • noun medicine Skin color noted as: normal, jaundice, cyanotic, flush, mottled, pale, or ashen as part of the skin signs assessment.
  • adjective Conveying colour, as opposed to shades of grey.
  • verb To give something colour.
  • verb intransitive To apply colours to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using coloured markers or crayons.
  • verb of a face To become red through increased blood flow.
  • verb To affect without completely changing.
  • verb informal To attribute a quality to.
  • verb mathematics To assign colours to the vertices of (a graph) or the regions of (a map) so that no two adjacent ones have the same colour.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (physics) the characteristic of quarks that determines their role in the strong interaction
  • verb affect as in thought or feeling
  • verb modify or bias
  • adjective having or capable of producing colors
  • noun any material used for its color
  • noun the appearance of objects (or light sources) described in terms of a person's perception of their hue and lightness (or brightness) and saturation
  • noun the timbre of a musical sound
  • noun a visual attribute of things that results from the light they emit or transmit or reflect
  • verb change color, often in an undesired manner
  • noun an outward or token appearance or form that is deliberately misleading
  • noun interest and variety and intensity
  • verb give a deceptive explanation or excuse for
  • noun a race with skin pigmentation different from the white race (especially Blacks)
  • verb add color to
  • verb decorate with colors

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English colo(u)r, from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color, from Old Latin colos "covering", from Proto-Indo-European *kel- (“to cover, conceal”). Akin to Latin cēlō ("I hide, conceal"). Displaced Middle English blee ("colour"), from Old English blēo. More at blee.

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Examples

  • Speaking of the highly-coloured males, especially among birds, the same writer states that "the _normal colour_ (italics ours) is that of the young and the female, and the colour of the male is the result of his excessive variability."

    Taboo and Genetics A Study of the Biological, Sociological and Psychological Foundation of the Family Melvin Moses Knight 1934

  • Shadow is, on the contrary, necessary to the full presence of colour; for every colour is a diminished quantity or energy of light; and, practically, it follows from what I have just told you -- (that every light in painting is a shadow to higher lights, and every shadow a light to lower shadows) -- that also every _colour_ in painting must be a shadow to some brighter colour, and a light to some darker one -- all the while being a positive colour itself.

    Lectures on Art Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 John Ruskin 1859

  • a considerable degree of what might be called naturalism, so far as good line-drawing and understanding of flower form goes, emphasis of colour being sought by means of _planes of colour_, rather than by planes of shadow.

    Line and Form (1900) Walter Crane 1880

  • a charge of a metal must rest upon a field that is of a colour or fur; or, contrariwise, that a charge of a colour must rest on a field that is of a metal or fur, -- that is, that _metal be not on metal, nor colour on colour_.

    The Handbook to English Heraldry Charles Boutell 1844

  • The main colour is maya blue with the "Aeroport Castello" sponsor screened on the in the middle.

    Add and updated kits-Villarreal CF away jersey 2008/09 Azmie aka switch image 2009

  • The main colour is maya blue with the "Aeroport Castello" sponsor screened on the in the middle.

    Archive 2009-03-01 Azmie aka switch image 2009

  • I can only empathise since my skin colour is the majority.

    kateelliott: Someone Else's Rant on the Internet is Worth Reading kateelliott 2009

  • Still fire and flesh pressed together, and a tiny spiral of smoke began to arise from Kwaque's finger-end that was different in colour from the smoke of a cigar-end.

    CHAPTER XIX 2010

  • The main colour is red with the white hoop in the middle, sleeve ends and Puma logos all being white.

    VfB Stuttgart 2008-09 team jerseys by Puma Azmie aka switch image 2009

  • The main colour is red with the white hoop in the middle, sleeve ends and Puma logos all being white.

    Archive 2009-03-01 Azmie aka switch image 2009

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