color
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: note: UK, etc
enpr: kŭlʹə
ipa: /ˈkʌl.ə/
note: UK, etc
rhymes: -ʌlə(ɹ)
ipa: /ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/
ipa: [ˈkʰʌl.ə(ɹ)]
ipa: [ˈkʌləɹ]
ipa: [ˈkʰɐɫ.ɐ]
note: Indic
ipa: [ˈkɐl.ɐ(ɾ)]
enpr: kŭlʹər
ipa: /ˈkʌl.ɚ/
rhymes: -ʌlə(ɹ)
enpr: ko͝olʹər
ipa: /ˈkʊl.ə(ɹ)/
note: Dublin
ipa: /ˈkʊl.ɚ/
note: Dublin
ipa: /ˈkʊlɐ/
homophone: culler (most accents)
Forms: form: colors
form: coloring
form: colored
form: colored
form: colour
form: usage notes
Etymology: From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color. Doublet of couleur.
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).
Senses: examples: text: We could color the walls red.
synonyms: dye
paint
stain
shade
tinge
tint
glosses: To give something color.
synonyms: dye
paint
stain
shade
tinge
tint
glosses: To give something color.
To cause (a pipe, especially a meerschaum) to take on a brown or black color, by smoking.
examples: text: My kindergartener loves to color.
synonyms: color in
glosses: To apply colors to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using colored markers or crayons.
examples: text: Her face colored as she realized her mistake.
synonyms: blush
glosses: To become red through increased blood flow.
raw_tags: of a person or their face
examples: text: That interpretation certainly colors my perception of the book.
synonyms: affect
influence
glosses: To affect without completely changing.
examples: text: Color me confused.
text: They tried to colour the industrial unrest as a merely local matter.
synonyms: call
glosses: To attribute a quality to; to portray (as).
examples: text: Can this graph be 2-colored?
text: You can color any map with four colors.
topics: graph-theory
mathematics
sciences
glosses: 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.
examples: text: 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.
text: 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.
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: To affect the quality of a speech sound, especially a vowel.
raw_tags: of a phoneme
Hyponyms: color in
discolor
miscolor
overcolor
precolor
recolor
Derived terms: colorable
colorate
color by number
color by numbers
colored
colorer
color in
color inside the lines
color outside the lines
color up
decolor
discolor
miscolor
overcolor
precolor
R-colored vowel
recolor
Related terms: colorably
coloration
tincture