white

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The achromatic color of maximum lightness; the color of objects that reflect nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; the complement or antagonist of black, the other extreme of the neutral gray series. Although typically a response to maximum stimulation of the retina, the perception of white appears always to depend on contrast.
2. n. The white or nearly white part, as:
3. n. The albumen of an egg.
4. n. The white part of an eyeball.
5. n. A blank unprinted area, as of an advertisement.
6. n. One that is white or nearly white, as:
7. n. White trousers or a white outfit of a special nature: tennis whites.
8. n. The white dress uniform of U.S. Navy or Coast Guard.
9. n. A white wine.
10. n. A white pigment.
11. n. A white breed, species, or variety of animal.
12. n. A member of a racial group of people having light skin coloration, especially one of European origin. See Usage Note at black.
13. n. Products of a white color, such as flour, salt, and sugar. Often used in the plural.
14. n. Games The white or light-colored pieces, as in chess.
15. n. Games The player using these pieces.
16. n. The outermost ring of an archery target.
17. n. A hit in this ring.
18. n. Pathology Leukorrhea.
19. n. A politically ultraconservative or reactionary person.
20. adj. Being of the color white; devoid of hue, as new snow.
21. adj. Approaching the color white, as:
22. adj. Weakly colored; almost colorless; pale: white wine.
23. adj. Pale gray; silvery and lustrous: white hair.
24. adj. Bloodless; blanched.
25. adj. Light or whitish in color or having light or whitish parts. Used with animal and plant names.
26. adj. Of or belonging to a racial group having light skin coloration, especially one of European origin: voting patterns within the white population.
27. adj. Not written or printed on; blank.
28. adj. Unsullied; pure.
29. adj. Habited in white: white nuns.
30. adj. Accompanied by or mantled with snow: a white Christmas.
31. adj. Incandescent: white flames.
32. adj. Intensely heated; impassioned: white with fury.
33. adj. Ultraconservative or reactionary.
34. adj. With milk added. Used of tea or coffee.
35. v. Printing To create or leave blank spaces in (printed or illustrated matter). Often used with out.
36. v. Archaic To whiten; whitewash.
37. v. Archaic To blanch.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Any one of several white pierid butterflies, as the great southern white, Pontia motivate, the checkered white, P. protodice, the gray-veined white, Pieris napi, or the cabbage-butterfly, P. rapæ.
2. n. In milling, the trade-name of flour made from the whitest and finest part of the wheat and free from all the outer coats.
3. n. Same as bloom, 6 .
4. Of the color of pure snow or any powder of material transmitting all visible rays without sensible absorption; transmitting and so reflecting to the eye all the rays of the spectrum combined in the same proportions as in the impinging light, and thus, as seen in sunlight, conveying the same impression to the eye as sunlight of moderate intensity; not tinged or tinted with any of the proper colors or their compounds; snowy: the opposite of black or dark.
5. Pale; pallid; bloodless, as from fear or cowardice.
6. Free from spot or guilt; pure; clean; stainless.
7. Fair; beautiful.
8. Dear; favorite; darling. See whiteboy, 1.
9. Square; honorable; reliable: as, a white man.
10. Gracious; specious; fair-seeming.
11. Gracious; friendly; favorable; auspicious: as, a white witch.
12. Silver: as, white money.
13. In musical notation, of a note, having an open head: as, whole notes and half notes are white. See note.
14. In heraldry, an epithet used instead of argent to note certain furs which are supposed to be represented not in silver but in dead white. It is a modern fanciful variation, and not good heraldry.
15. In silverware, chased or roughened with the tool, so as to retain a slightly granulated and therefore white surface, as distinguished from that of burnished silver.
16. Bright and clean; burnished without ornament, and in no way colored or stained: said of armor of steel or iron.
17. In ceramics, noting the biscuit when dry and ready for firing, because in that state it has grown much lighter in color than it was when first molded, and full of moisture.
18. Transparent and colorless, as glass or water; also, with reference to wine, light-colored, whitish or yellowish, as opposed to red: sometimes used to note wine of even a deep-amber color.
19. Belonging or pertaining to the Carmelites or other orders of monks for whose dress white is the prescribed color: as, the white friars.
20. In botany and zoology, the compounds of white with participial adjectives are numberless, as white-flowered, white-headed, white-winged. Only a few of these are given below.
21. A drink made in the south of England, said to consist of common ale to which flour and eggs have been added.
22. See Trillium, 1.
23. An unusually light-colored specimen of Ursua horribilis, the grizzly bear of the Rocky -Mountains: so named by Lewis and Clarke (1814). Compare first cut under bear.
24. Of India, Grus leucogeranus. See crane and Grus.
25. See elephant.
26. In entomology, a British aretiid moth, Spilosoma menthastri, expanding 1¾ inches, having the wings white or whitish and spotted with black, and the body yellow with black spots. The larva is a hairy black caterpillar which feeds on various plants.
27. A white-topped wave.
28. Certain delicate flesh used for food, as poultry, rabbits, veal, and pork.
29. Same as light meat. See meat.
30. The lemming of Hudson's Bay, Cunicuius torquatus; the snow-mouse, which turns pure-white in winter.
31. See rent,2.
32. The cushion-scale, or fluted scale, Icerya purchasi. See cushion-scale.
33. The rose-scale, Diaspis rosæ, a very white cosmopolitan species occurring on the twigs and leaves of the rose.
34. Synonyms White, Fair, Blond, Clear. As to complexion, white expresses that which has too little color for naturalness or health; that is fair which agreeably approaches white; that is clear which is free from blotch; there is a clear brown or olive as well as a clear blond. Blond is fair in distinctive application to the color of the human skin—properly to that of females.
35. n. A highly luminous color, devoid of chroma, and therefore indeterminate in hue. But a white intensely illuminated has a yellow effect, and very deeply shaded takes on the bluish look of gray. A derangement of the proportions of light in pure white to the extent of 3 per cent, of the red, C per cent, of the green, or.5 per cent, of the blue, is readily perceived by direct comparison; but quite considerable admixtures of chroma are compatible with the color's retaining the name of white.
36. n. A pigment of this color.
37. n. Something, or a part of something, having the color of snow. Specifically
38. n. The albumen of an egg. or that pellucid viscous fluid which surrounds the yolk; also, sometimes, the corresponding part of a seed, or the farinaceous matter surrounding the embryo.
39. n. That part of the ball of the eye which surrounds the iris or colored part.
40. n. plural In printing, blank spaces.
41. n. plural A white fabric otherwise called long cloth.
42. n. White clothing or drapery.
43. n. A member of the white race of mankind: as, the “poor whites” of the southern United States.
44. n. plural In medicine, leueorrhea.
45. To grow white; whiten.
46. To make white. Specifically
47. To make pale or pallid.
48. Synonyms See whiten.
49. A dialectal form of thwite. Compare whittle from thwittle.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Bright and colourless; reflecting equal quantities of all frequencies of visible light.
2. adj. Of Caucasian race.
3. adj. Designated for use by Caucasians.
4. adj. Relatively light or pale in colour.
5. adj. of coffee Containing cream, milk, or creamer.
6. adj. board games, chess The standard denomination of the playing pieces of a board game deemed to belong to the white set, no matter what the actual colour.
7. adj. Pertaining to an ecclesiastical order whose adherents dress in white habits; Cistercian.
8. adj. slang Honourable, fair; decent.
9. adj. Lacking coloration from ultraviolet light.
10. n. The color/colour of snow or milk; the colour of light containing equal amounts of all visible wavelengths.
11. n. A Caucasian person.
12. n. The albumen of bird eggs (egg white).
13. n. anatomy The sclera, white of the eye.
14. n. Any butterfly of the Pieris genus.
15. n. sports, billiards, snooker, pool The cue ball in cue games.
16. n. countable and uncountable White wine.
17. n. slang Street name for cocaine.
18. v. To make white; to whiten; to bleach.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Reflecting to the eye all the rays of the spectrum combined; not tinted with any of the proper colors or their mixtures; having the color of pure snow; snowy; -- the opposite of black or dark.
2. adj. Destitute of color, as in the cheeks, or of the tinge of blood color; pale; pallid.
3. adj. Having the color of purity; free from spot or blemish, or from guilt or pollution; innocent; pure.
4. adj. Gray, as from age; having silvery hair; hoary.
5. adj. Characterized by freedom from that which disturbs, and the like; fortunate; happy; favorable.
6. adj. Regarded with especial favor; favorite; darling.
7. n. The color of pure snow; one of the natural colors of bodies, yet not strictly a color, but a composition of all colors; the opposite of black; whiteness. See the Note under Color, n., 1.
8. n. Something having the color of snow; something white, or nearly so.
9. n. Specifically, the central part of the butt in archery, which was formerly painted white; the center of a mark at which a missile is shot.
10. n. A person with a white skin; a member of the white, or Caucasian, races of men.
11. n. A white pigment.
12. n. (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of butterflies belonging to Pieris, and allied genera in which the color is usually white. See Cabbage butterfly, under Cabbage.
13. v. To make white; to whiten; to whitewash; to bleach.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. being of the achromatic color of maximum lightness; having little or no hue owing to reflection of almost all incident light
2. n. a member of the Caucasoid race
3. n. United States educator who in 1865 (with Ezra Cornell) founded Cornell University and served as its first president (1832-1918)
4. adj. of or belonging to a racial group having light skin coloration
5. n. United States political journalist (1915-1986)
6. n. Australian writer (1912-1990)
7. n. (board games) the lighter pieces
8. adj. anemic looking from illness or emotion
9. n. (usually in the plural) trousers made of flannel or gabardine or tweed or white cloth
10. n. a tributary of the Mississippi River that flows southeastward through northern Arkansas and southern Missouri
11. n. the white part of an egg; the nutritive and protective gelatinous substance surrounding the yolk consisting mainly of albumin dissolved in water
12. n. United States writer noted for his humorous essays (1899-1985)
13. adj. benevolent; without malicious intent
14. n. United States jurist appointed chief justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1910 by President Taft; noted for his work on antitrust legislation (1845-1921)
15. adj. of summer nights in northern latitudes where the sun barely sets
16. adj. (of a surface) not written or printed on
17. adj. (of hair) having lost its color
18. adj. restricted to whites only
19. n. the quality or state of the achromatic color of greatest lightness (bearing the least resemblance to black)
20. adj. (of coffee) having cream or milk added
21. v. turn white
22. n. United States architect (1853-1906)
23. adj. glowing white with heat
24. adj. free from moral blemish or impurity; unsullied.
25. adj. marked by the presence of snow