Word.ws English Dictionary

color'd

color'd is the archaic form of colored.

color'd is the simple past and past participle of color.

Meaning of colored

Adjective

colored (comparative more colored, superlative most colored)

  1. (US) Having a color.
    • Wash colored items separately from whites and darks to prevent the colors from bleeding.
  2. (US, in-compounds) Having a particular color or kind of color.
    • The room was red, with a dark-colored rug.
  3. (US) Having prominent colors; colorful.
    • The singer wore a colored shirt.
  4. (US) Biased; pervasively (but potentially subtly) influenced in a particular way.
    • Mr. Brewer gave me his version of the history of the Conference of Studio Unions. It appeared to me then and appears to me now to have been a very colored view.1948, 80th United States Congress, Jurisdictional Disputes in the Motion-Picture Industry, volume 3, Washington: Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 1966
  5. (US, dated, offensive, usually) Of skin color other than white; in particular, black.
    • […] a beautiful silk standard donated to the Third Battalion by the colored ladies of the city of New York, was formally presented to the battalion.1898, William H. Chenery, The Fourteenth Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (colored) in the War to Preserve the Union, 1861-1865, page 38
  6. (Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, US, Zimbabwe, capitalized) Belonging to a multiracial ethnic group or category, having ancestry from more than one of the racial groups of Southern Africa (black, white, and Asian). (Under apartheid, used as a metadescription for mixed-race people and peoples such as the Cape Coloureds.)
    • Most of the colored community speaks Afrikaans, whereas languages like Xhosa or Venda are typically spoken by blacks and English is spoken mostly by whites.
    Synonyms:
    Eurafrican

See all 10 meanings of colored

Meaning of color

Verb

color (third-person singular simple present colors, present participle coloring, simple past and past participle colored)

  1. (US, transitive) To give something color.
    • We could color the walls red.
    Synonyms:
    dye, paint, stain, shade, tinge, tint
    1. (US, transitive) To cause (a pipe, especially a meerschaum) to take on a brown or black color, by smoking.
  2. (US, intransitive) 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
  3. (US) To become red through increased blood flow.
    • Her face colored as she realized her mistake.
    Synonyms:
    blush
  4. (US) To affect without completely changing.
    • That interpretation certainly colors my perception of the book.
    Synonyms:
    affect, influence
  5. (US, informal) To attribute a quality to; to portray (as).
    • Color me confused.
    Synonyms:
    call

See all 34 meanings of color

Forms of color'd

comparativemore color'd
superlativemost color'd

Words formed from color'd

Questions about color'd

What is color'd the archaic form of?
Color'd is the archaic form of colored.

Words near color'd in the dictionary

  1. color war
  2. color wars
  3. color wash
  4. color wheel
  5. color wheels
  6. color'd
  7. color-blind
  8. color-blindly
  9. color-blindness
  10. color-blindnesses
  11. color-code

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: color'd (page history and authors); colored (page history and authors); color (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.

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Cite this entry: “color'd.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/color%27d. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.