Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between orange and green, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 570 to 590 nanometers; any of a group of colors of a hue resembling that of ripe lemons and varying in lightness and saturation; one of the subtractive primaries; one of the psychological primary hues.
  • noun A pigment or dye having this hue.
  • noun Something that has this hue.
  • noun Chiefly Southern US The yolk of an egg.
  • noun Western US Gold. Used formerly by prospectors.
  • noun Any of various plant diseases characterized by yellow or yellowish discoloration of the leaves and caused by phytoplasmas that are transmitted by insects or by certain viruses.
  • adjective Of the color yellow.
  • adjective Having a yellow-brown skin color.
  • adjective Offensive Of or being a person of Asian origin.
  • adjective Slang Cowardly.
  • transitive & intransitive verb To make or become yellow.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • As originally applied to journalism, indecently sensational; in general, sensational; morbid; decadent. See yellow journal.
  • noun An acid coal-tar color of the monoazo type prepared by combining diazotized meta-sulphanilic acid with diphenyl amine. It dyes wool orange-yellow in an acid bath.
  • noun Same as yellow, 1 .
  • noun Same as diphenylamine-orange (which see, under orange).
  • To render yellow.
  • To become yellow; grow yellow.
  • Of a color resembling that of gold, butter, etc. See II.
  • See balsam.
  • A mulatto or a dark quadroon: used (as also yellow girl) both by whites and by negroes.
  • The yellow star-thistle, Centaurea solstitialis.
  • Seeflag and Iris.
  • See yellow-gum.
  • See Micropterus.
  • In entomology, Peck's skipper, Polites peckius, a small hesperian butterfly of America, of a brownish color with a large yellow blotch on each hind wing.
  • noun The color of gold, butter, the neutral chromates of lead, potassa, etc., and of light of wave-length about 0.581 micron.
  • noun The yolk of an egg; the vitellus: opposed to the white, or the surrounding albumen.
  • noun plural Jaundice, especially jaundice in cattle (see jaundice); hence, figuratively, jealousy.
  • noun plural Dyer's-weed.
  • noun Same as peach-yellows.
  • noun One of certain geometrid moths: an English collectors' name: as, the speckled yellow.
  • noun Any one of the group of small yellow butterflies; a sulphur. See sulphur, n., 3.

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

  • intransitive verb To become yellow or yellower.
  • adjective Being of a bright saffronlike color; of the color of gold or brass; having the hue of that part of the rainbow, or of the solar spectrum, which is between the orange and the green.
  • adjective Slang Cowardly; hence, dishonorable; mean; contemptible.
  • adjective colloq. Sensational; -- said of some newspapers, their makers, etc.
  • adjective (Med.) a fatal affection of the liver, in which it undergoes fatty degeneration, and becomes rapidly smaller and of a deep yellow tinge. The marked symptoms are black vomit, delirium, convulsions, coma, and jaundice.
  • adjective calisaya bark.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a North American fresh-water bass (Morone interrupta) native of the lower parts of the Mississippi and its tributaries. It is yellow, with several more or less broken black stripes or bars. Called also barfish.
  • adjective (Bot.) Same as Persian berry, under Persian.
  • adjective [Slang] a gold coin, as a guinea.
  • adjective (Bot.) See under Brier.
  • adjective (Bot.) a European labiate plant (Ajuga Chamæpitys).
  • adjective (Zoöl.) the European yellow-hammer.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a yellow catfish; especially, the bashaw.
  • adjective (Min.) a hydrous sulphate of iron; -- called also copiapite.
  • adjective a sulphide of copper and iron; copper pyrites. See Chalcopyrite.
  • adjective (Bot.) a yellow-flowered, cruciferous plant (Barbarea præcox), sometimes grown as a salad plant.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English yelow, from Old English geolu; see ghel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English yelwe, yelou, from Old English ġeolu, ġeolwe, from Proto-Germanic *gelwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃-u̯os (compare Welsh gelw ("pale"), Latin helvus ("dull yellow")), from *ǵʰelh₃ (“gleam, yellow”) (compare Irish geal ("white, bright"), Lithuanian žalias ("green"), Ancient Greek χλωρός (chlōrós, "light green"), Persian زر (zar, "yellow"), Sanskrit हरि (hari, "greenish-yellow")).

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Examples

  • Although pale yellow is a highly determinate color predicate relative to ˜yellow™, it is far from being maximally determinate.

    Determinates vs. Determinables Sanford, David H. 2006

  • The hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there was also (and indeed more commonly) a _light yellow_, as if a combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the mystery must lie in the spinners themselves.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 Various

  • The silk obtained the first day was of a deep yellow; to my great astonishment, the second reeling from the same spider gave silk of a brilliant silver-white color; while on the third occasion, as if by magic, the color had changed again, and I got only _yellow_ silk.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 Various

  • See gehðo. geolo, adj., _yellow_: acc.sg. geolwe linde (_the shield of yellow linden bark_), 2611. geolo-rand, st. m., _yellow shield_ (shield with a covering of interlaced yellow linden bark): acc.sg.,

    Beowulf Robert Sharp 1879

  • See gehðo. geolo, adj., _yellow_: acc.sg. geolwe linde (_the shield of yellow linden bark_), 2611. geolo-rand, st. m., _yellow shield_ (shield with a covering of interlaced yellow linden bark): acc.sg.,

    Beowulf Robert Sharp 1879

  • Thus, in the proposition, Gold is yellow, the quality _yellow_ is affirmed of the substance _gold_.

    A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2) John Stuart Mill 1839

  • By putting a spider under the influence of chloroform, and then carrying the first thread under a pin stuck in a cork to one part of a spindle, and the second or yellow line over another pin to a different part of the spindle, I reeled off from the same spider, at the same time, two distinct bands of silk, of which one was a deep golden-yellow, the other a bright silver-white; while, if both threads ran together, there was formed a band of _light yellow_ from the union of the two.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 Various

  • They were of a bright yellow color and very viscid; but now I noticed that neither the color nor the viscidity pertained to the entire net, for although the concentric circles constituting the principal part of the web were _yellow_, and very _elastic_, and studded with little beads of _gum_, (Fig 3,) yet the diverging lines or _radii_ of the wheel-shaped structure, with all the guys and stays by which it was suspended and braced, were _dry_ and _inelastic_, and of a _white_ or lighter yellow color.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 Various

  • -- creating normalized set, copy values from settable create table normalset (id int not null default 0, val char (8), key (id)); insert into normalset SELECT id, 'cyan' FROM settable WHERE s like '% cyan%'; insert into normalset SELECT id, 'yellow' FROM settable WHERE s like '% yellow%'; insert into normalset SELECT id, 'magenta' FROM settable WHERE s like '% magenta%'; insert into normalset SELECT id, 'black' FROM settable WHERE s like '% black%';

    Planet MySQL 2010

  • The word yellow comes from the Old English word geolw, the German gelb and geld as in “gold”, and the Latin helvus, meaning “light bay.”

    Zolar’s Magick Of Color Simon 1994

Comments

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  • "Look at the stars

    Look how they shine for you

    And everything you do

    Yeah, they were all yellow"

    September 4, 2008

  • A black bear named Yellow-Yellow is smarter than the average bear.

    July 29, 2009

  • "And that's why the color yellow makes me sad I think. You know what makes me sad? You do?!?" -- Therapist sergeant

    March 6, 2012