sallow
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈsæl.oʊ/
ipa: /ˈsæl.əʉ/
rhymes: -æləʊ
Forms: form: sallower
form: sallowest
form: salley
Etymology: From Middle English salowe, from Old English salu, from Proto-West Germanic *salu, from Proto-Germanic *salwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *selH-.
See also Dutch zaluw, dialectal German sal; also Irish salach (“dirty”), Welsh halog, Latin salīva, Russian соло́вый (solóvyj, “cream-colored”), and - through Frankish - French sale.
Senses: examples: text: Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
ref: c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:
text: […] were it not that his Complexion is sallow, and that he is something short of a Leg, and Blind of one Eye, he would positively be the most lovely of all the human Species.
ref: 1770, Henry Brooke, The Fool of Quality, volume 5, Dublin, page 162:
text: Once a handsome face, with bright color, it was now sallow and deep-lined […]
ref: 1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter LXII, in Daniel Deronda, volume IV, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book VIII (Fruit and Seed), page 226:
text: Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and was very clean. ¶ There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
ref: 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0091:
text: […] there was something owl-like about the eyes, round which there was a sallow, hollow depression.
ref: 1937, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1880, in The Years, New York: Harcourt, Brace, page 64:
text: She had sallow skin and myopic eyes, and none of the men had ever slept with her because none of the men had ever wanted to […]
ref: 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Eternal City”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 433:
text: For more than a century after the scandal of 1865, artists and historians wrestled with Olympia’s sallow skin, the bracelet on her right forearm, the orchid in her upswept red hair.
ref: 2023 September 9, Jason Farago, “The 19th Century’s Most Scandalous Painting Comes to New York”, in The New York Times:
glosses: Yellowish.
Of a sickly pale colour.
qualifier: most regions
raw_tags: of light skin
of skin
examples: text: The girls are mostly Slavic-pretty, long-limbed with high cheekbones, sallow skin and green eyes. They are the closest thing to supermodels that Mulhuddart has ever seen.
ref: 2007 December 23, David McWilliams, We must begin the culture debate:
text: A yellow undertone is often found on people with sallow skin – e.g. Asian.
ref: 17 January 2012, Aisling, "Am I pink or yellow? How to choose the right foundation tone. And what is the deal with Mac foundations?" beaut.ie
text: She had such lovely sallow skin, the handsome high cheekbones of the north with the brown conker-colour eyes and the dark silken hair.
ref: 2012 June 13, Billy Keane, “I feel so much for Mickey. Maybe there is peace for him in sport”, in Irish Independent:
glosses: Yellowish.
Of a tan colour, associated with people from southern Europe or East Asia.
raw_tags: of skin
examples: text: Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.
ref: 1891, Oscar Wilde, “chapter 2”, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.; Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC:
text: She put her hand on the arm of her careworn, sallow father, and frothing her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal red carpet.
ref: 1920, D. H. Lawrence, chapter 1, in Women in Love, New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, published 1996, page 14:
text: In a matter of hours she was looking gaunt, and sallow: her face had a kind of negative color.
ref: 1982, Saul Bellow, chapter 2, in The Dean’s December, New York: Pocket Books, published 1983, page 20:
glosses: Having skin (especially on the face) of a sickly pale colour.
raw_tags: of a person
examples: text: The terrible descriptions were so real and vivid, that the sallow pages seemed to turn red with gore […]
ref: 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC:
text: On the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape […]
ref: 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Velay”, in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, Boston: Roberts Brothers, page 48:
text: Scenes like this — the sallow evening light, the old Indian cropping grass, the creak of the cartwheels, the streaming egrets — were more native to him than England.
ref: 1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 5”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC:
text: In a restaurant window little meringue cases, not quite sallow and not quite white.
ref: 1992, Edna O’Brien, Time and Tide, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Part 4, Chapter 44, p. 319:
text: Now a sallow night-light glowed from the table and heaped large shadows on the beds and up the walls.
ref: 2011, Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child, New York: Knopf, Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 169:
glosses: Having a similar pale, yellowish colour.
raw_tags: of objects or dim light
examples: text: Mr. President, the sallow air of our cities, the blackened sands of our seashores, our lakes and harbors reeking of sewage and depleted of oxygen are but a part of the sad legacy of the idea that nature can be treated as a servant, blindly obedient to every want, whim or pleasure of man.
ref: 1972, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation, Predatory Mammals and Endangered Species, page 559:
text: The boat's deck was covered in moss, and its warm, sallow water was filled with lichens that gave off an eerie green glow.
ref: 2011, Jacob Murphy, Guardians, page 44:
text: My mouth went dry and a sallow feeling descended upon me.
ref: 2012, Dr. James Kennedy, The Baywood Tales, page 17:
text: The burden of a hollow and sallow feeling that was suffocating my soul as a learner had given way at this time to a joyous feeling of anticipation;
ref: 2013, Dr. John H. LaManque, A Bricklayer's Story, page 130:
text: This ugliness, though, filled the air now. With something rank and squalid and seemingly spent with the character of death. No, it wasn't that I was scared, being all alone now out on my property. In my house. It was this surrounding sallow atmosphere now which depressed me. This deep sense of some deep basic wrong occupying my surrounding world.
ref: 2016, Paul Quintanilla, Master Tom:
glosses: Foul; murky; sickly.
Derived terms: sallowish
sallow kitten
sallowly
sallowness
sallow sedge