Word.ws English Dictionary

colouring

UK/ˈkʌl.ər.ɪŋ//ˈkʌl.ɚ.ɪŋ/

colouring is the alternative spelling of coloring.

colouring is the present participle and gerund of colour.

Meaning of coloring

Noun

coloring (countable and uncountable, plural colorings)

  1. An act or process which applies color.
  2. Any substance used to give color.
    • Our cookies contain no artificial flavorings or colorings.
    Synonyms:
    pigment
  3. The appearance as to color.
    • The Rolands, both U.S.-educated lawyers with faculty positions in the national law school, are olive skinned, with the coloring of some Italians or Sephardic Jews.1983 December 24, Andrea Loewenstein, “"What's Freedom Without Food In Your Stomach?" — A Trip to Haiti”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 23, page 8
    Synonyms:
    coloration
  4. A disguise or discoloration.
  5. An assignment of a color to each vertex of a graph, usually such that no two vertices connected by an edge are given the same color.

See all 7 meanings of coloring

Meaning of colour

Verb

colour (third-person singular simple present colours, present participle colouring, simple past and past participle coloured)

  1. Commonwealth and Ireland standard spelling of color.

See all 3 meanings of colour

Adjective

colouring (comparative more colouring, superlative most colouring)

  1. Of something that provides colour.
    • He soon exhausted pleasure, and then reasoned upon it: he soon exhausted it, because he wanted that colouring enthusiasm which creates more than half of what it enjoys;...1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 168

Forms of colouring

Noun
pluralcolourings
Adjective
comparativemore colouring
superlativemost colouring

Words formed from colouring

Phrases with colouring

Questions about colouring

What does colouring mean?
Colouring means of something that provides colour.
What is colouring the alternative spelling of?
Colouring is the alternative spelling of coloring.
What part of speech is colouring?
Colouring is an adjective.
How do you pronounce colouring?
Colouring is pronounced /ˈkʌl.ər.ɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near colouring in the dictionary

  1. colourimetric
  2. colourimetrical
  3. colourimetrically
  4. colourimetries
  5. colourimetry
  6. colouring
  7. colouring book
  8. colouring books
  9. colouring in
  10. colouring inside the lines
  11. colouring outside the lines

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: colouring (page history and authors); coloring (page history and authors); colour (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-colouring.ogg.

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