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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

color.

The spectral composition of visible light.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkʌl.ə//ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰʌl.ə(ɹ)]Southern-England[ˈkʌləɹ]Northern-Ireland, Scotland
  1. The spectral composition of visible light.

    uncountable
    Humans and birds can perceive color.
  2. A subset thereof: A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class.

    countable
    Most languages have names for the colors black, white, red, and green.
    What color are your bf's eyes?
  3. A subset thereof: Hue as opposed to achromatic colors (black, white and grays).

    uncountable
    The accident victim's face was white, drained of all color.
  4. A subset thereof: These hues as used in color television or films, color photographs, etc (as opposed to the shades of grey used in black-and-white television).

    countable · uncountable
    This film is broadcast in color.
    Most people dream in color, but some dream in black and white.
  5. A subset thereof: Any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms, including azure, gules, sable, and vert.

    countable · uncountable
  6. A paint.

    countable · uncountable
    The artist took out her colors and began work on a landscape.
  7. Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity.

    uncountable
    Color has been a sensitive issue in many societies.
  8. Skin color, noted as normal, jaundiced, cyanotic, flush, mottled, pale, or ashen as part of the skin signs assessment.

    countable · uncountable
  9. A flushed appearance of blood in the face; redness of complexion.

    countable · uncountable
  10. Richness of expression; detail or flavour that is likely to generate interest or enjoyment.

    countable · figuratively · uncountable
    color commentator
    color commentary
  11. A standard, flag, or insignia: A standard or banner.

    countable · in-plural · uncountable
    The loss of their colors destroyed the regiment's morale.
  12. A standard, flag, or insignia: The flag of a nation or team.

    countable · in-plural · uncountable
    The colors were raised over the new territory.
  13. A standard, flag, or insignia: Gang insignia.

    countable · in-plural · uncountable
    Both of the perpetrators were wearing colors.
  14. An award for sporting achievement, particularly within a school or university.

    countable · in-plural · uncountable
    He was awarded colors for his football.
  15. The morning ceremony of raising the flag.

    countable · in-plural · uncountable
  16. A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons; color charge.

    countable · uncountable
  17. A third-order measure of derivative price sensitivity, expressed as the rate of change of gamma with respect to time, or equivalently the rate of change of charm with respect to changes in the underlying asset price.

    uncountable
  18. The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia )

    countable · uncountable
  19. Any of the colored balls excluding the reds.

    countable · uncountable
  20. A front or facade; an ostensible truth actually false; pretext.

    countable · uncountable
  21. An appearance of right or authority; color of law.

    countable · uncountable
    Under color of law, he managed to bilk taxpayers of millions of dollars.
    They held possession under color of title.
  22. Gold, particles of gold found when prospecting.

    countable · uncountable
  23. To bleed, either through injury or blading. Usually prefaced with "get".

    countable · slang · uncountable
    The local hero is getting color in tonight's spectacle.
  24. Timbre, often in relation to orchestration.

    countable · uncountable
  25. The quality of a particular vowel sound.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *-ōs Proto-Indo-European *ḱélōs Proto-Italic *kelōs Old Latin colōs Latin color Old French color Anglo-Norman colurbor. Middle English colour English color From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color. Doublet of couleur. Largely displaced English blee, Middle English blee (“color”), from Old English blēo. Also partially replaced Old English hīew (“color”) and its descendants (English hue), which is less often used in this sense. The spelling color was popularized in modern American English by Noah Webster, to match the spelling of the word's Latin etymon, and make all American spellings of the derivatives consistent (colorimeter, coloration, colorize, colorless, etc).

adj/ˈkʌl.ə//ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰʌl.ə(ɹ)]Southern-England[ˈkʌləɹ]Northern-Ireland, Scotland
  1. Conveying color, as opposed to shades of gray.

    US · not-comparable
    Color television and movies were considered a great improvement over black and white.
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *-ōs Proto-Indo-European *ḱélōs Proto-Italic *kelōs Old Latin colōs Latin color Old French color Anglo-Norman colurbor. Middle English colour English color From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color. Doublet of couleur. Largely displaced English blee, Middle English blee (“color”), from Old English blēo. Also partially replaced Old English hīew (“color”) and its descendants (English hue), which is less often used in this sense. The spelling color was popularized in modern American English by Noah Webster, to match the spelling of the word's Latin etymon, and make all American spellings of the derivatives consistent (colorimeter, coloration, colorize, colorless, etc).

verb/ˈkʌl.ə//ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/Received-Pronunciation[ˈkʰʌl.ə(ɹ)]Southern-England[ˈkʌləɹ]Northern-Ireland, Scotland
  1. To give something color.

    US · transitive
    We could color the walls red.
  2. To give something color. To cause (a pipe, especially a meerschaum) to take on a brown or black color, by smoking.

    US · transitive
  3. To apply colors to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using colored markers or crayons.

    US · intransitive
    My kindergartener loves to color.
  4. To become red through increased blood flow.

    US
    Her face colored as she realized her mistake.
  5. To affect without completely changing.

    US
    That interpretation certainly colors my perception of the book.
  6. To attribute a quality to; to portray (as).

    US · informal
    Color me confused.
    They tried to colour the industrial unrest as a merely local matter.
  7. To assign colors to the vertices of a graph (or the regions of a map) so that no two vertices connected by an edge (regions sharing a border) have the same color.

    US
    Can this graph be 2-colored?
    You can color any map with four colors.
  8. To affect the quality of a speech sound, especially a vowel.

    US · usually
    Many languages have a "neutral", roughly central vowel like /a/ or /ə/ which can be colored to a back, rounded vowel like [o] by an adjacent labialized consonant, or to a front, unrounded vowel like [e] by an adjacent palatalized consonant.
    The Proto-Indo-European laryngeal *h₂ often colors the neutral vowel *e with an a-like quality, while *h₃ results in a more o-like quality; *h₁ has no coloring effect.
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *-ōs Proto-Indo-European *ḱélōs Proto-Italic *kelōs Old Latin colōs Latin color Old French color Anglo-Norman colurbor. Middle English colour English color From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color. Doublet of couleur. Largely displaced English blee, Middle English blee (“color”), from Old English blēo. Also partially replaced Old English hīew (“color”) and its descendants (English hue), which is less often used in this sense. The spelling color was popularized in modern American English by Noah Webster, to match the spelling of the word's Latin etymon, and make all American spellings of the derivatives consistent (colorimeter, coloration, colorize, colorless, etc).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.