Word.ws English Dictionary

celadon

UK/ˈsɛlədən//ˈsɛləˌdɑn/

celadon noun: a pale green colour, possibly tinted with gray.

celadon: a pale green colour, possibly tinted with gray
Image: Photo by Quadell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

celadon (usually uncountable, plural celadons)

  1. (usually) A pale green colour, possibly tinted with gray.
    • Eau de Nil (“water of the Nile”) is a tricky color to pin down precisely. It is a light-greenish hue, more saturated than celadon, less gray than sage.2018 February 13, Katy Kelleher, “Eau de Nil, the Light-Green Color of Egypt-Obsessed Europe”, in The Paris Review
  2. (usually) A pale green Chinese glaze.
  3. (usually) A ceramic ware with a pale green glaze.

Adjective

celadon (comparative more celadon, superlative most celadon)

  1. Of a pale green colour tinted with gray.
    • [H]e stroked a soft blue cat with celadon eyes which had appeared from nowhere and now made itself comfortable in his lap […].1941, Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Penguin 1971 edition, page 40

celadon meaning in Tamil and Vietnamese

celadon in Tamil

pale green colour
இளம்பச்சை iḷampaccai

celadon in Vietnamese

pale green glaze
men ngọc bích
ceramic with pale green glaze
đồ tráng men ngọc bích
pale green colour
màu ngọc bích

Forms of celadon

Noun
pluralceladons
Adjective
comparativemore celadon
superlativemost celadon

Origin of celadon

Borrowed from the French céladon, from the character named Céladon, who wore pale green ribbons, in the novel L'Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé, from Latin Celadon, a warrior's name in Ovid's Metamorphoses, related to Ancient Greek κέλᾰδος (kélădos, “din, clamour”).

Questions about celadon

What does celadon mean?
Celadon means a pale green colour, possibly tinted with gray.
What is celadon in Tamil?
Celadon in Tamil is இளம்பச்சை (iḷampaccai). See Celadon meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is celadon?
Celadon can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce celadon?
Celadon is pronounced /ˈsɛlədən/ (UK).
What is the plural of celadon?
The plural of celadon is celadons.

Words near celadon in the dictionary

  1. cel
  2. cel shading
  3. cel-shaded
  4. Cela
  5. CELAC
  6. celadon
  7. celadonite
  8. celadonites
  9. celadons
  10. celamim
  11. celamims

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: celadon (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Knabrupt-celadon.wav.

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