brown

Noun (1)

brown (countable and uncountable, plural browns)

1. A colour like that of chocolate or coffee.
   • The browns and greens in this painting give it a nice woodsy feel.
   • He wore brown jeans for his birthday.
2. (countable) One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of 4 points.
3. (uncountable) Black tar heroin.
4. (archaic, countable, slang) A copper coin.
   • “To save a journey up the town, / A razor lent here for a brown: / But if you think the price too high, / I beg you won’t the razor try.”1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861
   • I know there are many persons — some who are themselves poor — who 'never turn a beggar from their door,' but always give them a few browns (halfpence) or some scran (broken victuals).1853, Charles John Chetwynd Talbot, Meliora, Or, Better Times to Come, page 247
5. A brown horse or other animal.
   • […] browns are the soberest, bays are the worst tempered, and chestnuts are the most foolish.1877, George Nevile, Horses and Riding, page 105
6. (capitalized, countable, ethnic, informal, slur, sometimes) A person of mostly Latin American (or Latino), Middle Eastern/North African, South Asian, and sometimes Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, or rarely Native American descent; a brown-skinned person; someone of mulatto, or biracial appearance.
   • Many browns and blacks are immigrants — some of whom have not yet become naturalized citizens of the United States.2005, Kristen A. Myers, Racetalk: Racism Hiding in Plain Sight
   • For example, a Brown Asian Caucus emerged at the inaugural National Conference on Asian American Mental Health in 1972 – where Filipinos were joined by Pacific Islanders who also felt marginalized as part of the Asian American/ Pacific Islander (AAPI) umbrella group.2020, Kevin L. Nadal, The Brown Asian American Movement: Advocating for South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Filipino American Communities
7. Any of various nymphalid butterflies of subfamily Satyrinae (formerly the family Satyridae), such as those of the genera Heteronympha and Melanitis.
8. (informal) A brown trout (Salmo trutta).
9. A mass of birds or animals that may be indiscriminately fired at.
   • The temptation to have a shot into the brown was great. There was not a head there which was not a big one and the one by himself was not too easy a shot since it is always difficult to shoot when lying in soft snow.1928, R. Pigot, Twenty-five Years Big Game Hunting, page 166
   • My anger mounted at this, I opened the courtyard door and raised my musket to fire into the brown; I had loaded it with small shot, and if it had gone off that would have been the death of us and the ruin of all of us in the house.1979, Kevin Andrews, Athens Alive, page 223
10. A brown dye or pigment.
11. A pen, pencil, crayon, etc., made of brown pigment.

Adjective (1)

brown (comparative browner or more brown, superlative brownest or most brown)

1. Having a brown color/colour.
   • 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.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, archived from the original on 24 Aug 2024
2. (obsolete) Gloomy.
3. (US, capitalized, sometimes) Latino/Latin American
   • 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...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...
4. (US, broadly, capitalized, sometimes, vague) of color.
   • By Saad’s accounting – and this is not dissimilar from the white nationalist “great replacement theory” – western societies are bringing about their own destruction by admitting immigrants from poorer, browner and more Muslim countries.2025 April 8, Julia Carrie Wong, “Loathe thy neighbor: Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 30 Apr 2025
5. (capitalized, sometimes) South Asian or sometimes Middle Eastern or North African
   • 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...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
   • What’s interesting, when you look past all the hysterical bullshit about brown people and trans kids and the imaginary woke mind virus, is that Hanson’s new converts in Farrer and South Australia are angry about the same shit as everyone else, whether that’s a Lebanese-Australian bricklayer in...2026 June 3, John Birmingham, “Neoliberalism ate the world. Enter: Pauline Hanson”, in Crikey, archived from the original on 22 Jun 2026
6. (capitalized, sometimes) Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, or sometimes Native American
   • 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...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
7. Not green (environmentally irresponsible); anti-green (against environmental protection).
   • Near-synonyms: nongreen, antigreen
   • 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.”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

   Synonyms:

   nongreen, antigreen

Verb

brown (third-person singular simple present browns, present participle browning, simple past and past participle browned)

1. (intransitive) To become brown.
   • Fry the onions until they brown.
   • The chicken was browning nicely, the skin beginning to crisp and take on the toasty tones of oiled wood.2006, Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 269

   Synonyms:

   embrown, brownify

2. (childish) Synonym of poop (“to defecate”).
   • I've just browned myself.

   Synonyms:

   poop

3. (transitive) To cook something until it becomes brown.
   • Pound an onion, warm a spoonful of ghee and throw in the onion, brown it slightly, add your curry stuff, brown this till it smells pleasantly, […]1887, Indian Cookery "Local" for Young Housekeepers: Second Edition, page 67
4. (intransitive, transitive) To tan.
   • Light-skinned people tend to brown when exposed to the sun.
5. (transitive) To make brown or dusky.
   • A trembling twilight o'er the welkin moves, / Browns the dim void and darkens deep the groves.1807, Joel Barlow, The Columbiad

   Synonyms:

   embrown

6. (transitive) To give a bright brown colour to, as to gun barrels, by forming a thin coating of oxide on their surface.
   • It is mixed uniformly with olive oil, and rubbed upon the iron slightly heated, which is afterwards exposed to the air, till the wished-for degree of browning is produced.1860, Andrew Ure, Ure’s Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, page 463
7. (derogatory, ethnic, intransitive, offensive, slang, slur) To turn progressively more Hispanic or Latino, in the context of the population of a geographic region.
   • the browning of America

Proper noun capitalized: Brown

IPA/bɹaʊn/

Brown (countable and uncountable, plural Browns)

1. (countable) A surname.
   • (The Browns gave the Obamas an ornate penholder made from the timber of a Victorian antislave ship.)2009 March 4, Helene Cooper, “Obama’s Star Turn at Summit Gets Mixed Results”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Feb 2022
   • After 170 years this is the closest Auckland has come to having a brown mayor. Sure he's a Palagi. But his name is Brown, he's run Manukau for a long time and there's heaps of brown people there so he's gladly owned by many in the Pacific Community.2010 October 10, Oscar Kightley, New Zealand Herald
   1. An English and Scottish surname transferred from the nickname.
   2. An Irish surname of Anglo-Norman origin, a translation of de Brún.
2. An unincorporated community in California; named for hotelier George Brown.
3. An unincorporated community in Louisiana; named for landowner George W. Brown.
4. An unincorporated community in Oklahoma; named for postmaster Robert H. Brown.
5. An unincorporated community in West Virginia; named for early settler John Brown.
6. A ghost town in Nevada.
7. A number of townships in the United States, listed under Brown Township.
8. Brown University.

Noun (2) capitalized: Brown

IPA/bɹaʊn/

Brown (plural Browns)

1. Alternative letter-case form of brown (“person with a dark complexion”).

Adjective (2) capitalized: Brown

IPA/bɹaʊn/

Brown (comparative more Brown, superlative most Brown)

1. (Canada, UK, US, often) Alternative letter-case form of brown (“of a dark complexion”).