Word.ws English Dictionary

brown goods

brown goods noun: consumer electronics equipment for entertainment, such as televisions and music centres.

Noun

brown goods pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) consumer electronics equipment for entertainment, such as televisions and music centres
    • Electronics capabilities led to the emergence of a distinction between "white goods" (the typically enamelled kitchen appliances such as fridges and cookers) and "brown goods" (such as wood- or bakelite-cased record players, radios, and TVs).1999, Miles, Ian, "Home Informatics: New Consumer Technologies, in eds. William H. Dutton et al., Society on the Line: Information Politics in the Digital Age, page 107
  2. (plural, plural-only) unbleached cotton textiles
  3. (plural, plural-only, beverage industry) spirits which are brown in colour, such as whiskey
    • In the U.S., there has been a gradual shift from “brown goods” (darker colored drinks, such as whiskey and brandy) to “white goods” (lighter colored drinks, such as gin and vodka).2012, Dwight B. Heath, “To every thing there is a season: When do people drink?”, in Drinking Occasions: Comparative Perspectives on Alcohol and Culture, Routledge, →ISBN, page 35

Origin of brown goods

From their colour. Consumer electronics equipment formerly had a brown wooden veneer.

Questions about brown goods

What does brown goods mean?
Brown goods means consumer electronics equipment for entertainment, such as televisions and music centres.
What part of speech is brown goods?
Brown goods is a noun.

Words near brown goods in the dictionary

  1. brown falcons
  2. brown fat
  3. brown gargle
  4. brown George
  5. brown Georges
  6. brown goods
  7. brown goshawk
  8. brown goshawks
  9. brown hairstreak
  10. brown hairstreaks
  11. brown hare

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brown goods (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “brown goods.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brown_goods. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.