Definitions

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

  • adjective Strong yellowish pink to moderate orange; reddish.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of a dull-red color; red but somewhat deficient in chroma: thus, a bay or chestnut horse is rufous; Venetian red is rufous. It enters into the specific name of many animals, technically called rufus, rufescens, etc.

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

  • adjective Reddish; of a yellowish red or brownish red color; tawny.

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

  • adjective of a red, reddish colour

Etymologies

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

[From Latin rūfus, red; see reudh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin rufus ("red").

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Examples

  • The remaining laughing-thrushes are known as the rufous-chinned

    Birds of the Indian Hills Douglas Dewar 1916

  • Among the Rocky Mountains, and especially on the western side of the range, there dwells another little hummer called the rufous humming-bird, because the prevailing color of his plumage is reddish, and between this family and the broad-tails there exists a bitter feud.

    Birds of the Rockies 1896

  • There are words to represent these different grades of color, such as 'rufous' for reddish-brown and 'fuscous' for dusky-brown; these you must learn later on, for some of them are pretty hard ones.

    Citizen Bird Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for Beginners Elliott Coues 1870

  • The head and bib were a dark, rufous brown, the underside pale.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • The head and bib were a dark, rufous brown, the underside pale.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • The head and bib were a dark, rufous brown, the underside pale.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • A rufous fly-catcher is hunting for his breakfast under the verandah roof because there are no insects out in the rain.

    Australian floods: Why were we so surprised? 2011

  • This cisticola has a black back thus its alternative common name with rufous wing panels and a grey tail with prominent sub-terminal spots and white tips on the retrices.

    Mystery bird: Ethiopian cisticola, Cisticola lugubris 2011

  • A red kite was right in front of me in a gaunt old ash tree; it was a raptor of considerable size, with mottled brown and rufous plumage and a distinctive forked tail.

    Country diary: East Yorkshire 2011

  • The head and bib were a dark, rufous brown, the underside pale.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

Comments

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  • tinged with red

    July 18, 2007