Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A deep red to dark grayish purple.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Purple-brown; reddish-brown; of a flea-color.
- n. A purple-brown or reddish-brown color.
Wiktionary
- n. a brownish-purple color. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, deep red to dark grayish purple.
- adj. Of a brownish-purple color. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, deep red to dark grayish purple.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of a dark brown or brownish purple color.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a color varying from dark purplish brown to dark red
Etymologies
- From French couleur puce ("flea-colored"), from Latin pūlex ("flea"). (Wiktionary)
- French (couleur) puce, flea (color), puce, from Old French, variant of pulce, flea, from Latin pūlex, pūlic-. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“We should all be grateful for our honest friends; the ones who tell us hard truths, like that we have something stuck in our teeth and that puce is not a color anyone should wear.”
“He was arrayed in puce and gold, rings slipped on to his fingers, his legs coaxed into hose with marvellous clocks splashed on their sides, and a diamond buckle placed above the large black bow of his tie-wig.”
“It seems that SNCF ticket machines, autoroute toll collection machines, etc. need a "puce" - what's a Yank to do?”
“He does not understand the soul-agony of a man who makes his first appearance in puce.”
“With Chirac playing the drama queen, decribed by the media as "puce", and a Schröder, "white with rage" puffing himself up with artificial fury, not least because Blair is cosying up to Merkel, all it needed was for Juncker to come up with his now infamous phrase: "Europe is not in a state of crisis… it is in a state of profound crisis," and the copy-writers had all they needed.”
“The puce-faced obstructionist, breathing fire and fury at anyone who dares ask about Rooney?”
The Guardian: Sir Alex Ferguson's press conference on Wayne Rooney | 19 October
“Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin A detail of the "cigar box" at Drynachan Lodge, the drawing room with tartan carpet and puce velvet club chairs.”
“Like how sometimes your friend has a new sweater in a particularly awful shade of puce that makes him/her look quite bilious, and when your friend asks, "How do I look in my pleasing new sweater?" you respond, if you are a well-bred person, "What a striking color that is!”
“His black eye faded to a sort of sickly puce gray.”
“Let the country be relieved that Old Glory's design does not include puce or mauve.”
The Washington Post: Fashion: Robin Givhan on candidates' and their families' election-night apparel
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘puce’.
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Reds
crimson, blood, scarlet, rott, rojo, brick, fire engine, vermilion, carmine, burgundy, amaranth, alizarin and 115 more...
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pabouche, pabulous, pabulum, pacable, pace, pachydermia, pachyglossal, pachymeter, pachynsis, paciferous, pacificate, pactolian and 1766 more...
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Uncommon Colours
azure, myrtle, periwinkle, viridian, jade, emerald, lime, chartreuse, asparagus, celadon, harlequin, olive and 147 more...
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A Sequel to 250 Spelling Words
Words to quiz the intermediate and advanced speller alike
sinopia, replevin, lathee, hoisin, kerygma, czardas, amoxicillin, talipes, simoleon, hypermnesia, anodyne, mystique and 238 more...
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Archaic Colours
Words for colours that have fallen out of use.
aeneous, croceate, cretaceous, cramoisy, corbeau, coquelicot, coccineous, claret, cinerious, chrysochlorous, chlorochrous, cesious and 128 more...
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not your normal colors
Instead of "blue," "red," or "green," we say "azure," "scarlet," and "emerald."
azure, garnet, celadon, bone, vermilion, indigo, maize, puce, tangerine, beryl, cerulean
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Colour Me Happy
violet, lavender, rose, eggshell, mauve, fuschia, grey, azure, almond, sienna, purple, periwinkle and 71 more...
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Colors/Patterns/Prints/Textures
fritillary, chartreuse, tortoise-shell, brindle, burnt orange, cerulean, amaranth, sandy, amber, mold, fungus, kiwi and 65 more...
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jonasword's list
My words unusual strange new clever or stupid
puce, ecru, magenta, mauve, taupe, azure, cerulean, celadon, cinnabar, viridian, vermilion, ultramarine and 6 more...
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colors
This list aims to contain words whose primary definition describes the color itself, unlike gold, silver, rust, turquoise, etc. Of course red can mean communist, blue can mean sad, yellow can mean ...
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, purple, pink, grey, gray, white, black and 25 more...
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Colour & light
Beautiful words for the things we sense.
opaline, verdigris, opalescent, lustrous, nacreous, gloaming, lambent, lucent, darkling, glister, lapis, sapphire and 24 more...
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Words in which "u" is pronounced "yu"
cute, uniform, puny, municipal, butte, fume, perfume, puke, cucumber, huge, demure, cube and 87 more...
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Ugliest Sounding Words
List words that sound ugly, regardless of meaning
kumquat, milk, meal, jizz, bubonic, fester, goulash, sasquatch, carbuncle, sieve, onomatopoeia, burlesque and 29 more...
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Colors
cerise, carnelian, florid, claret, watchet, rosaceous, coquelicot, vermilion, celadon, nacreous, lapis, viridescent and 132 more...
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Colors
Words for colors, including things so associated with a color that they can be used in reference to a color.
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, purple, navy, lavender, turquoise, chartreuse and 218 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for puce.
bilby Uggh, puce makes me think of unpleasant surprises in public toilets. Your colour association with puce may be erroneous but it's on the kind side, sarra. Nov 29, 2008
sarra See mauve for a description of a similarly bastard colour. I cannot make this word conjure up the colour it really ought, no matter how hard I try.
Puce is a horrible word; this is the colour it (inaccurately!) recalls to me.
I am eagle-eyed and sharp-tongued on any other colour names, including those on the green/blue border which everyone loves to argue about. I got a perfect score on the hue test. Why these two anomalies?! I must have been misinformed by my mother at a very tender age… Nov 29, 2008
drosselmeier It was named by Louis XVI. Aug 5, 2008
reesetee Ah, Stan Freberg. Man's a genius. Like you, c_b, I have that whole thing memorized. :-) Dec 29, 2007
seanahan That's great chained_bear, do you recommend buying the whole thing? Stan Freberg's "The United States of America" box set on Amazon Dec 24, 2007
chained_bear "Why couldn't it have been puce?
Lavender over chartreuse?
Or possibly some exotic shade--
A delicate orange, mauve, or jade--
Instead of the choice that has been made?
Why couldn't it have been
Possibly cinnamon?!"
--George Washington to Betsy Ross, as depicted in Stan Freberg's "The United States of America, Volume I."
"Everybody wants to be an art director,
Everybody wants to call the shots.
Everybody wants to be a flag dissector,
Changing all my stars to polka-dots.
Everybody thinks that they're the final word on
What is strictly 'out' and what is 'in'!
How'd you like a flag that features fleur-de-lys on
Ochre corrugated tin?!"
--Betsy Ross to George Washington, as depicted in Stan Freberg's "The United States of America, Volume I." Dec 22, 2007
bilby I find it tricky to imagine this colour but the name of the colour is very unappealing. Dec 22, 2007
slumry I had no idea that this referred to the color of a flea. "And where does the flea get its red-brown color?" she mused.
Ick. Jun 30, 2007