color
Syllables: col·or/ˈkʌl.ə/UK/ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/
color noun: the spectral composition of visible light.
Noun
color (countable and uncountable, plural colors)
- The spectral composition of visible light.
- Humans and birds can perceive color.
- Synonyms:
- blee
- A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class.
- Most languages have names for the colors black, white, red, and green.
- What color are your bf's eyes?
- Hue as opposed to achromatic colors (black, white and grays).
- The accident victim's face was white, drained of all color.
- These hues as used in color television or films, color photographs, etc (as opposed to the shades of grey used in black-and-white television).
- This film is broadcast in color.
- Most people dream in color, but some dream in black and white.
- Synonyms:
- color television
- Any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms, including azure, gules, sable, and vert.
- A paint.
- The artist took out her colors and began work on a landscape.
- Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity.
- Color has been a sensitive issue in many societies.
- Synonyms:
- complexion, ethnicity, race
- Skin color, noted as normal, jaundiced, cyanotic, flush, mottled, pale, or ashen as part of the skin signs assessment.
- A flushed appearance of blood in the face; redness of complexion.
- […] her very embarrassment wore a graceful air; her high colour had softened down to a warm, delicate tint; and her dress, which looked beautifully new and fresh, was in good taste, and showed her off to advantage.1864, Sir Henry Stewart Cunningham, Late Laurels, volumes 1-2, page 117
- Richness of expression; detail or flavour that is likely to generate interest or enjoyment.
- color commentator
- color commentary
- A standard or banner.
- The loss of their colors destroyed the regiment's morale.
- The flag of a nation or team.
- The colors were raised over the new territory.
- The arrival of the British Consul at Bangkok shall not take place before the ratification of this Treaty, nor until ten vessels owned by British subjects, sailing under British colours and with British papers, shall have entered the port of Bangkok for purposes of trade, subsequent to the signing...1856, “Treaty signed April 18, 1855; ratified April 5, 1856”, in Treaty of friendship and commerce between Great Britain and Siam, Bangkok: J. H. Chandler, page 7
Show 13 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
- Gang insignia.
- Both of the perpetrators were wearing colors.
- An award for sporting achievement, particularly within a school or university.
- He was awarded colors for his football.
- The morning ceremony of raising the flag.
- A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons; color charge.
- A third-order measure of derivative price sensitivity, expressed as the rate of change of gamma with respect to time, or equivalently the rate of change of charm with respect to changes in the underlying asset price.
- Synonyms:
- colour, DgammaDtime, gamma decay
- The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia )
- Any of the colored balls excluding the reds.
- A front or facade; an ostensible truth actually false; pretext.
- At the far end of the continuum, Roger Seagraves collected personal items from people he'd murdered, or assassinated rather, since he'd done it under the color of serving his country.2011, David Baldacci, The Collectors
- An appearance of right or authority; color of law.
- Under color of law, he managed to bilk taxpayers of millions of dollars.
- They held possession under color of title.
- Gold, particles of gold found when prospecting.
- He smelted Wells’s colour before it was valued, and by the time anybody saw it, it had been poured into bars and stamped with the Reserve seal.2013, Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries, London: Granta, published 2014, →ISBN, page 184
- To bleed, either through injury or blading. Usually prefaced with "get".
- The local hero is getting color in tonight's spectacle.
- Timbre, often in relation to orchestration.
- In other words, Brahms saves the higher violin color for the more important foreground statement and assigns the soft swirling background to middle-register violins and violas, while the cellos dominate in their best voice.1982, Samuel Adler, The Study of Orchestration, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, published 1982, →ISBN, page 115
- The quality of a particular vowel sound.
Adjective
color (not comparable)
- Conveying color, as opposed to shades of gray.
- Color television and movies were considered a great improvement over black and white.
- I took my TV over on the first trip. I got a beauty. It's four years old, color, but when I had a little snow and asked the repairman to come in, he told me never, never turn this set in for a new one.1977, John Cheever, Falconer (A Borzoi Book), New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →ISBN, page 209
Verb
color (third-person singular simple present colors, present participle coloring, simple past and past participle colored)
- To give something color.
- We could color the walls red.
- To cause (a pipe, especially a meerschaum) to take on a brown or black color, by smoking.
- To apply colors to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using colored markers or crayons.
- My kindergartener loves to color.
- Synonyms:
- color in
- To become red through increased blood flow.
- Her face colored as she realized her mistake.
- Synonyms:
- blush
- To affect without completely changing.
- That interpretation certainly colors my perception of the book.
- To attribute a quality to; to portray (as).
- Color me confused.
- They tried to colour the industrial unrest as a merely local matter.
- Synonyms:
- call
- To assign colors to the vertices of a graph (or the regions of a map) so that no two vertices connected by an edge (regions sharing a border) have the same color.
- Can this graph be 2-colored?
- You can color any map with four colors.
- To affect the quality of a speech sound, especially a vowel.
- Many languages have a "neutral", roughly central vowel like /a/ or /ə/ which can be colored to a back, rounded vowel like [o] by an adjacent labialized consonant, or to a front, unrounded vowel like [e] by an adjacent palatalized consonant.
- The Proto-Indo-European laryngeal *h₂ often colors the neutral vowel *e with an a-like quality, while *h₃ results in a more o-like quality; *h₁ has no coloring effect.
color meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
color in Hindi
- particular set of the visible spectrum
- रंग raṅg
- spectral composition of visible light
- रंग raṅg
color in Tamil
- spectral composition of visible light
- நிறம் niṟam, வண்ணம் vaṇṇam
color in Marathi
- spectral composition of visible light
- रंग raṅga
color in Urdu
- spectral composition of visible light
- رَن٘گ raṅg
More languagesFewer languages
- color in Bengali
- রঙ roṅ, রং roṅ, বর্ণ borno, রঙিন roṅin
- color in Telugu
- రంగు raṅgu, వర్ణము varṇamu
- color in Malayalam
- നിറം niṟaṁ, വർണ്ണം vaṟṇṇaṁ, വർണ്ണരാജി vaṟṇṇarāji
- color in Kannada
- ಬಣ್ಣ baṇṇa
- color in Punjabi
- ਰੰਗ raṅg, رَنْگ rang
- color in Gujarati
- વર્ણ varṇa, રંગ raṅg, વાન vān, રંગવું raṅgvũ
- color in Odia
- ରଙ୍ଗ raṅga
- color in Sanskrit
- रङ्ग raṅga
- color in Sinhala
- වර්ණ warṇa
- color in Assamese
- ৰং roṅ, বৰণ boron
- color in Nepali
- रङ्ग raṅga
- color in Pashto
- رنګ rang, رنګول
- color in Tagalog
- kulay
- color in Arabic
- لَوْن lawn, لون lōn, ألوان ʔalwān, ألوانات ʔalwanāt
- color in Malay
- warna, rona, warna kulit, panji-panji
- color in Indonesian
- warna, pataka
- color in Persian
- رَنْگ rang, گُون gūn, گون gun, رنگ کردن
- color in Thai
- สี sǐi
- color in Vietnamese
- màu, màu sắc, màu da, nhuộm
- color in Myanmar
- အရောင် a.raung
Examples of color in a sentence
- We should paint the wall another color.
- a bit of local color
- Could you give me some color with regards to which products made up the mix of revenue for this quarter?
Synonyms of color
13 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of color
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | colors |
| alternative Commonwealth Ireland | colour |
| alternative form | usage notes |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | colors |
| present participle | coloring |
| past participle | colored |
| past | colored |
Origin of color
From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color. Doublet of couleur. Largely displaced English blee, Middle English blee (“color”), from Old English blēo. Also partially replaced Old English hīew (“color”) and its descendants (English hue), which is less often used in this sense. The spelling color was popularized in modern American English by Noah Webster, to match the spelling of the word's Latin etymon, and make all American spellings of the derivatives consistent (colorimeter, coloration, colorize, colorless, etc).
Words formed from color
- anticolor
- bicolor
- bodycolor
- coat color dilution lethal
- colorability
- color analyst
- color announcer
- color banding
- color bar
- color barrier
- color bass
- colorbearer
- colorblind
- color-blind
- color blind
- color blindness
- colorbreed
- colorburst
- colorcast
- color center
- color charge
- color-code
- color code
- color-coded
- color coded
- color commentary
- color commentator
- color compass
- color confinement
- color constancy
- color-coordinate
- color coordinate
- color coordinate system
- color coordination
- color depth
- color fade
- colorfast
- colorfastness
- color field
- color-flavor
- color-flavor locking
- color font
- color force
- colorful
- color grading
- color-guard
- color guard
- coloriferous
- colorification
- Colorify
- colorimeter
- colorimetry
- colorine
- colorisation
- colorise
- coloriser
- colorism
- colorist
- coloristic
- colorization
Phrases with color
- color in
- color me
- color TV
- color up
- in color
- of color
- color man
- color men
- color pop
- color TVs
- color war
- eye color
100 more phrasesFewer phrases
- lip color
- web color
- color bars
- color line
- color pops
- color wars
- color wash
- deep color
- four color
- full color
- high color
- skin color
- spot color
- tone color
- true color
- type color
- color codes
- color fades
- color fonts
- color lines
- color model
- color proud
- color screw
- color space
- color story
- color wheel
- local color
- color coding
- color fields
- color forces
- color guards
- color killer
- color models
- color of law
- color pencil
- color screws
- color spaces
- color timing
- color wheels
- poster color
- color charges
- color killers
- color pencils
- color stories
- color timings
- play of color
- primary color
- process color
- color analysts
- color barriers
- color of title
- color triangle
- plays of color
- tertiary color
- color by number
- color of office
- color triangles
- in living color
- secondary color
- troop the color
- accidental color
- color announcers
- color by numbers
- color revolution
- color separation
- color television
- hyperbolic color
- impossible color
- troops the color
- turn one's color
- color blindnesses
- color coordinated
- color coordinates
- color photography
- color revolutions
- color separations
- color televisions
- color temperature
- trooped the color
- turns one's color
- color commentaries
- color commentators
- color coordinating
- color of authority
- color temperatures
- four color problem
- four color theorem
- trooping the color
- turned one's color
- complementary color
- turning one's color
- color inside the lines
- color outside the lines
- color coordinate systems
- color of someone's money
- red-green color blindness
- horse of a different color
- what color is your Bugatti
- red-green color blindnesses
- what color is the sun in your world
Words that rhyme with color
Questions about color
- What does color mean?
- Color means the spectral composition of visible light.
- What is color in Hindi?
- Color in Hindi is रंग (raṅg). See Color meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use color in a sentence?
- We should paint the wall another color.
- What part of speech is color?
- Color can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
- How do you pronounce color?
- Color is pronounced /ˈkʌl.ə/.
- What is the plural of color?
- The plural of color is colors.
Words near color in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: color (page history and authors); રંગ (Gujarati) (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: en-us-color.ogg.
Cite this entry: “color.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/color. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.