yellow
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: homophone: yello
ipa: /ˈjɛl.əʊ/
ipa: /ˈjɛl.oʊ/
ipa: /ˈjɛlə/
ipa: /ˈjælə/
ipa: /ˈjɑlə/
ipa: /ˈjɪlə/
ipa: /ˈjʌlə/
ipa: /ˈjɛl.ɚ/
ipa: /ˈjæl.ɚ/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈjɛlːo(ʊ)/
note: without the toe–tow merger
ipa: /-ɔʊ/
ipa: /ˈjɛlo(w)/
note: Ottawa Valley
ipa: [ˈjɛlo(w)]
note: Ottawa Valley
ipa: [ˈjɤlʊ]
note: Ottawa Valley
ipa: [-ə(w)]
ipa: /ˈjɛl.əʊ/
note: Dublin
ipa: /ˈjɛl.ʌo̞/
ipa: /ˈjel.əʉ/
ipa: /ˈjæl.əʉ/
note: salary–celery merger
ipa: /ˈjæl.əʉ/
rhymes: -ɛləʊ
Forms: form: yellower
form: yellowest
form: yeallow
form: yeller
Etymology: From Middle English yelwe, yelou, from Old English ġeolwe, oblique form of Old English ġeolu, from Proto-West Germanic *gelu, from Proto-Germanic *gelwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃wos, from *ǵʰelh₃- (“gleam, yellow”).
Cognate with Scots yella (“yellow”), North Frisian gööl, güül (“yellow”), Saterland Frisian jeel (“yellow”), West Frisian giel (“yellow”), Cimbrian gel, ghéel (“yellow”), Dutch geel (“yellow”), Dutch Low Saxon gael, gel (“yellow”), German gelb, gehl (“yellow”), German Low German gel, geel, gęl, gäl (“yellow”), Luxembourgish giel (“yellow”), Vilamovian gaoł (“yellow”), Yiddish געל (gel), געלב (gelb, “yellow”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish gul (“yellow”), Faroese and Icelandic gulur (“yellow”). Compare also Welsh gell (“bay, tawny”), Latin helvus (“dull yellow”), Irish geal (“white, bright”), Italian giallo (“yellow”) Lithuanian žalias (“green”), Ancient Greek χλωρός (khlōrós, “light green”), Persian زرد (zard, “yellow”), Sanskrit हरि (hari, “greenish-yellow”), Russian жёлтый (žóltyj, “yellow”), Russian зелёный (zeljónyj, “green”).
The verb is from Middle English yelwen, ȝalowen, ȝolewen, from Old English ġeolwian, from the adjective.
Senses: examples: text: He had a yellow laptop in his bag.
text: A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought / First fruits, the green ear and the yellow sheaf.
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, line 434:
text: Red o'er the forest glows the setting sun, / The line of yellow light dies fast away / That crown'd the eastern copse, and chill and dun / Falls on the moor the brief November day.
ref: 1827, [John Keble], “Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity”, in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume II, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [B]y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 85:
text: There's a one-eyed yellow idol / To the north of Kathmandu; / There's a little marble cross below the town; / And a brokenhearted woman / Tends the grave of 'Mad' Carew, / While the yellow god for ever gazes down.
ref: 1911, J. Milton Hayes, The green eye of the little yellow god:
text: dorrẹ̅, dōrī adj. & n. […] Golden or reddish-yellow […] (a. 1398) *Trev. Barth. 59b/a: ȝelouȝ colour [of urine] […] tokeneþ febleness of hete […] dorrey & citrine & liȝt red tokeneþ mene.
ref: 1962 (quoting c. 1398 text), Hans Kurath & Sherman M. Kuhn, editors, Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-01044-8, page 1242
antonyms: nonyellow
unyellow
glosses: Of a yellow hue.
examples: text: What you should be is not yellow at all. If you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it.
ref: 1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 13, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC:
text: You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you!
ref: 1975, Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
synonyms: cowardly
glosses: Lacking courage.
examples: text: The denizens of the gossipy world of the pink press, purple prose and yellow tabloids are shivering over disputed photographs of Princess Caroline of Monaco.
ref: 2004 October 4, Doreen Carvajal, “Photo edict muffles gossipy press”, in International Herald Tribune, retrieved 29 Jul 2008:
topics: journalism
media
publishing
glosses: Characterized by sensationalism, lurid content, and doubtful accuracy.
examples: text: They were all tall and all handsome, though they varied in their degree of darkness of skin, some being as dark as Mahomed, and some as yellow as a Chinese.
ref: 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
glosses: Of a hue attributed to Far East Asians, especially the Chinese.
raw_tags: of the skin
examples: text: Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.
ref: 1913, Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu:
text: The two youths, the brown and the yellow, faced each other at the cross-roads, under a dim street-lamp.
ref: 1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 516:
glosses: Far East Asian (relating to Asian people).
examples: text: "Eh, Oscar—you hear about your yeller nephew?".
ref: 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VI, in Capricornia, page 64:
text: A big full-blood gin cottoned onto me. “Give us a drink, yeller feller.”
ref: 1965, Mudrooroo, Wild Cat Falling, HarperCollins, published 2001, page 74:
glosses: Of mixed Aboriginal and Caucasian ancestry.
examples: text: Charley threw her over for a yellow gal named Nancy: he never forgave Vashti for the vanishing from his life of a menace that had come to mean more to him than Vashti herself.
ref: 1933 September 9, James Thurber, “My Life and Hard Times—VI. A Sequence of Servants”, in The New Yorker:
glosses: Synonym of high yellow.
synonyms: word: high yellow
examples: text: yellow constituencies
ref: 2012 March 2, Andrew Grice, “Yellow rebels take on Clegg over NHS 'betrayal'”, in The Independent:
topics: government
politics
glosses: Related to the Liberal Democrats.
examples: text: the black–yellow coalition
topics: government
politics
glosses: Related to the Free Democratic Party, a political party in Germany.
Derived terms: absinthe yellow
aniline yellow
antimony yellow
Apennine yellow-bellied toad
arylide yellow
Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross
aurora yellow
Berger's clouded yellow
black-and-yellow grosbeak
blue-and-yellow macaw
butter yellow
chrome yellow
clouded yellow
code yellow
common yellow oxalis
common yellow woodsorrel
dandelion yellow
Doctor Yellow
double yellow line
double yellow lines
eastern yellow robin
eastern yellow wagtail
federal yellow
full-course yellow
golden-yellow
grass-yellow
greater yellow-headed vulture
green-yellow
halberdleaf yellow violet
highway yellow
high yellow
if it's yellow let it mellow
Indian yellow
infrayellow
iodine yellow
king's yellow
Leipzig yellow
lime yellow
Lucifer yellow
Martius yellow
mellow yellow
mountain clouded yellow
naphthalene yellow
naphthol yellow
Naples yellow
pale clouded yellow
pinard yellow
safety yellow
saffron yellow
second yellow card
selective yellow
single yellow line
southern yellow pine
spotless grass yellow
the yellow peril
upright yellow-sorrel
visual yellow
wear yellow stockings
western yellow pine
western yellow wagtail
yellow acacia
yellow admiral
yellow-ammer
yellow anaconda
yellow anemone
yellow arsenic
yellow atrophy
yellow baboon
yellow-back
yellow back
yellow badge
yellow bark
yellow bedstraw
yellow beet
yellow-bellied
yellow-bellied sapsucker
yellow-bellied sea snake
yellow-bellied slider
yellow-bellied tit
yellow bells
yellow belly
yellowbelly
yellow bile
yellow-billed chough
yellow-billed egret
yellow-billed grosbeak
yellow-billed kite
yellow-billed loon
yellow-billed spoonbill
yellow-billed teal
yellow-billed tit-tyrant
yellow birch
yellow-bird
yellowbird
yellow bird's-nest
yellow bittern
yellow bob
yellow bone
Yellow Book
yellow box
yellow boy
yellow brain
yellow brain fungus
yellow-breasted bunting
yellow-breasted chat
yellow-breasted greenfinch
yellow brick road
yellow-brick road
yellow bristle grass
yellow broom
yellow-browed antbird
yellow-browed bunting
yellow-browed tit
yellow-browed warbler
yellow bugle
yellow bullhead
yellow bunting
yellow cab
yellow cake
yellow card
yellow-card
yellow cedar
yellow centaury
yellow-cheeked tit
yellow cobra
yellow coltsfoot
yellow coneflower
yellow copper
yellow copperas
yellow crazy ant
yellow-crescent blister beetle
yellow cross liquid
yellow-crowned
yellow-crowned bishop
yellow dock
yellow dog
yellow dog contract
yellow dog Democrat
yellow dog fund
yellow dryad
yellow dwarf
yellow earth
yellow-edged pygarctia
yellow elder
yellow-eyed grass
yellow-eyed penguin
yellowface
yellow false indigo
yellow fat disease
yellow fever
yellow flag
yellow flax
yellow-flowered water hyssop
yellow flycatcher
yellow fumitory
yellow garden spider
yellow goat
yellow-golds
yellow goods
yellow grease
yellow-green alga
yellow-green brushfinch
yellow gum
yellow-haired
yellowhammer
yellow-hammer
yellow hammer
yellow harlequin
yellow-headed amazon
yellow-headed blackbird
yellow hill ant
yellow horde
yellowish
yellowism
yellow jack
yellow-jacket
yellow jacket
yellow jasmine
yellow jersey
yellow jessamine
yellow journalism
yellow journalist
yellow knight
yellow lady's slipper
yellow-legged gull
yellow-legged tinamou
yellow light
yellow light of death
yellow line
yellow-lipped sea krait
yellow locust
yellowly
yellow mai
yellow man
yellow-mantled weaver
yellow meadow ant
yellow media
Yellow Medicine County
yellow menace
yellow metal
yellow Monday
yellow mongoose
yellow moray
yellow nail syndrome
yellow-naped amazon
yellow-necked field mouse
yellow-necked mouse
yellow nigger
yellow nightshade
yellow notice
yellow off
yellow oleander
yellow onion
yellow-orange
yellow oriole
yellow orpiment
yellow out
yellow pages
yellow paint
yellow passport
yellow patch
yellow pea
yellow pepper
yellow perch
yellow peril
yellow perilist
yellow phosphorus
yellow pine
yellow pocket
yellow pond lily
yellow pond-lily
yellow poplar
yellow precipitate
yellow press
yellow rain
yellow-rattle
yellow rattle
yellow-red
yellow ribbon
Yellow River
yellow rocket
yellow-rump
yellow-rumped
yellow-rumped finch
yellow-rumped mannikin
yellow-rumped warbler
yellow sallfly
yellow Sally
yellow salsify
Yellow Sea
yellow seahorse
yellow-shafted flicker
yellow sheet
yellow shirt
yellow-shouldered ladybird
yellow sigatoka
yellowskin
yellow-skinned
yellow slug
yellow snow
yellow soap
yellow sorghum stunt
yellow spot
yellow-spot cadlina
yellow squash
yellow star
yellow state
yellow streak
yellow supergiant
yellowtail
yellow-tailed black cockatoo
yellow tang
yellow tea
yellow terror
yellow thistle
yellow-throated
yellow-throated marten
yellow-throated spadebill
yellow-throated warbler
yellow ticket
yellow tit
yellow toadflax
yellow-toothed cavy
yellow trap
yellow trembler
yellow trillium
yellow trumpetbush
yellow tussock
yellow union
yellow up
yellow-vented bulbul
yellow vest
yellow warbler
yellow wash
yellow waterlily
yellow-weed
yellow-white
yellow willowherb
yellow wine
yellow wood anemone
yellow woodland anemone
yellow wood sorrel
yellow woodsorrel
yellow yarrow