brown
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /bɹaʊn/
ipa: /bɹuːn/
rhymes: -aʊn
Forms: form: browner
form: more brown
form: brownest
form: most brown
form: broon
Etymology: From Middle English broun, from Old English brūn (“brown; dark; dusky”), from Proto-West Germanic *brūn, from Proto-Germanic *brūnaz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH-. Doublet of bruin.
Cognates
* Dutch bruin
* German braun
* Ancient Greek φρύνη (phrúnē), φρῦνος (phrûnos, “toad”)
* Latin brunneus (“brown”)
* Lithuanian bė́ras (“brown”)
* Sanskrit बभ्रु (babhrú, “reddish-brown”)
* West Frisian brún
Senses: examples: text: But none of those brown dwarfs were speeding along on a trajectory that would carry them out of the galaxy like “runaway” hypervelocity stars observed by astronomers in the last two decades.
ref: 2024 August 21, Ashley Strickland, “An unusual object is moving so fast it could escape the Milky Way. Scientists aren’t certain what it is”, in CNN:
glosses: Having a brown colour.
glosses: Gloomy.
examples: text: Reminds me of the time they asked me and a group of other Latino, predominantly Mexican, friends for our passports when we tried to go to their [expletive] party a little over a year ago.[…]
The saddest part is that I don’t think they understand why it’s insulting to ask a brown person for a passport.
ref: 2015 November 2 [2014], Susan Svrluga, quoting Ivonne Gonzalez, “Students accuse Yale SAE fraternity brother of saying ‘white girls only’ at party door”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2015, Grade Point:
glosses: Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin.
Latino/Latin American
glosses: Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin.
of color.
qualifier: vague
examples: text: I think they sort of realized like, oh, we have Aasif who is a Muslim, an American, brown person, you know, who can sit on that fence between cultures and sort of talk about what it is--what this is from the perspective of being an insider and an outsider at the same time.[…]
I think there is in the sort of South Asian, you know, psyche, a kind of adoration of Western ideals and culture that was sort of implanted into us by the British, you know, and this idea that everything that is Western is superior and better than what we have and what India--you know, what is true to our own culture.
ref: 2021 September 9, Aasif Mandvi, quotee, “Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Aasif Mandvi”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 Mar 2023:
glosses: Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin.
South Asian or sometimes Middle Eastern or North African
raw_tags: of Asians and Africans
examples: text: I came to deeply embrace anti-racism in slow, sustained increments.
To do so, I had to embrace my own identity as a Brown person -- and understand my own complicity in white supremacy.[…]
I had grown up in an entire Southeast Asian culture that had largely been groomed, indoctrinated and brainwashed into white-centered thinking over some 450 years of colonization by our Western overlords: Spain for almost 400 years, and then the United States of America for nearly 50 years more.
ref: 2020 September 25, Eric J. Daza, “How A 'Secret Asian Man' Embraced Anti-Racism”, in LAist, archived from the original on 23 Apr 2021, Essays:
glosses: Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin.
Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, or sometimes Native American
raw_tags: of East-Eurasian ancestry
examples: text: Near-synonyms: nongreen, antigreen
text: Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain’s biggest retailers, are locked in a fierce battle to prove who is greener. Even BSkyB, the British satellite outpost of the distinctly brown Murdoch empire, has declared itself “carbon-neutral.”
ref: 2011, Adrian Wooldridge, Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World — for Better and for Worse, HarperCollins Business, page 48:
glosses: Not green (environmentally irresponsible); anti-green (against environmental protection).
Related terms: sense: environmentally irresponsible
word: brownfield