ungreen
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Etymology: From Middle English ungrene, from Old English ungrēne (“not green”), from Proto-West Germanic *ungrōnī (“not green”), equivalent to un- + green. Compare West Frisian ûngrien (“ungreen”), Dutch ongroen (“ungreen”), German ungrün (“not green”), Danish ugrøn (“ungreen”), Swedish ogrön (“ungreen”), Icelandic ógræn (“ungreen”).
Senses: examples: text: The ungreen emerald ring went round and round, and the ungreen emerald earrings swung: Thelma was working at the rim of her glass, too.
ref: 1970, John McIntosh, The Stonefish, page 193:
text: The ungreen virescent exhibits a low rate of true photosynthesis (on both a leaf fresh weight and chlorophyll basis) compared to wild-type.
ref: 1972, Dissertation Abstracts International, page 76:
text: Adam is also a member of the class of ungreen things, and by virtue of being ungreen can be an icon for ungreen things. But a poet who wanted to talk about ungreenness would have to take special pains to get us to notice that Adam was ungreen.
ref: 1973, Robert Snukal, High Talk: The Philosophical Poetry of W. B. Yeats, page 61:
text: This clearly demonstrates the problem of multivalence because ungreen colors are many.
ref: 2020, Andrzej Jarczewski, The Verbal Philosophy of Real Time, page 122:
glosses: Not green.
examples: text: It is funny for the seaside, it looks such a “house-ified' place, it's an ungreen seaside.
ref: 1903, Society for Psychical Research, Proceedings - Volume 17, page 241:
text: The same article includes a recipe for a rather ungreen salad: Salad of mixed meat
ref: 2008, Jim Chevallier, Après Moi, Le Dessert: A French Eighteenth Century Model Meal, page 25:
text: More popular with visiting schoolchildren than tourists, the arboretum is worth a visit for anyone craving greenery in this ungreen city.
ref: 2009, Eliot Greenspan, Nicholas Gill, Charlie O'Malley, Frommer's? Central America, page 448:
text: Later on Jerusalem would thread its enchantment and I would fall to its allure, but at first all I saw—despite the forest—was a dusty, ungreen, and unwatered land, the dry Judean hills stretching away toward the Dead Sea, whose dark dullness we could glimpse from viewpoints in the neighborhood.
ref: 2012, Emma Williams, It's Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street:
text: The road had been transported or turned over into a kind of field and the grass was announcing itself in our ungreen and ungrowing world
ref: 2013, Tim Dee, Four Fields, page 1:
text: Tell me why seedpods are pouring through a forest that has not a single ungreen spot to fill.
ref: 2017, Bruce Beasley, The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems, page 34:
text: New Yorker's attended hockey and boxing at Madison Square Garden, an enclosed ungreen place, while Catalans follow one of the major global brands in football at the decidedly permanent and imposing Camp Nou.
ref: 2017, Anxo Cereijo Roibás, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Design for Sport:
glosses: Having little or no vegetation or plant matter.
examples: text: The sheriff of Norfolk had power to search for and seize any "sound, dry, and ungreen" wood which he could find, and send the same to the Fletchers or arrow makers to be made into sheaves, tipped with steel heads according to a pattern in the Tower of London.
ref: 1875, Charles John Palmer, The Perlustration of Great Yarmouth, with Gorleston and Southtown, page 77:
text: She scorched the ungreen fields, starving men of the yields of each expected crop;
ref: 1981, Euripides, Helen, page 71:
text: Common examples were that trees are tall while other plants are short, and that soft-stemmed plants die each year after the rains stop while trees are hardy, surviving the dry season in a dry and ungreen state.
ref: 1989, Children's Environments Quarterly:
text: Looking at those vines reminds me that when I feel most ungreen and unproductive, when things aren't going well, if I stay connected to Jesus, the true Vine, as today's verse says, he will bring forth not just some fruit but much fruit.
ref: 2014, Cheri Fuller, Sandra P. Aldrich, The One Year Women's Friendship Devotional:
glosses: Lacking sap or vitality; desiccated.
examples: text: There are green products packaged in ungreen ways. Ungreen products wrapped in green ways. Green products from ungreen companies. And green companies making ungreen products.
ref: 1991, 1992 Earth Journal: Environmental Almanac and Resource Directory, page 305:
text: In other words, they are very unlikely to cut down on purchases in a particularly ungreen product category in order to increase their purchasing in a particularly green one.
ref: 1992, Dominik Koechlin, Kaspar Müller, Green Business Opportunities: The Profit Potential, page 71:
text: In this way, a shift in consumption is encouraged away from “ungreen” goods and services.
ref: 2017, Jo Ritzen, A Second Chance for Europe, page 100:
text: Fourth, the definition encompasses both positive green behaviours that benefit the environment and negative ungreen behaviours that actively harm the environment.
ref: 2018, Victoria K. Wells, Diana Gregory-Smith, Danae Manika, Research Handbook on Employee Pro-Environmental Behaviour, page 15:
glosses: Environmentally unfriendly; harmful to or inconsiderate of the environment.