Word.ws English Dictionary

colourish

colourish noun: a substance used in gilding to brighten the finish of the gilded object.

Noun

colourish (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) A substance used in gilding to brighten the finish of the gilded object.
    • Muffola, a kind of colour that goldsmithes call colourish.1598, John Florio, A Worlde of Wordes, or, Most Copious, and Exact Dictionarie in Italian and English, London: Edw. Blount, page 234
    • For having by this means overlaid it evenly with Gold, they can easily with fire force away the Mercury; and, with a liquor impregnated with Nitre, Verdigrease, Sal Armoniack, and other Saline Bodies, which they call a Colourish, restore its lustre to the remaining Gold, which they after make...1671, Robert Boyle, Some Considerations Touching the Usefulnesse of Experimental Naturall Philosophy, Oxford: Ric. Davis, Volume 2, Essay I, Section V, p. 27

Verb

colourish (third-person singular simple present colourishes, present participle colourishing, simple past and past participle colourished)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To add colour to, to brighten with colour.
    • Would truth dispense, we could be content, with Plato, that knowledge were but Remembrance; that Intellectuall acquisition were but Reminiscentiall evocation, and new impressions but the colourishing of old stamps which stood pale in the soul before.1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 2nd edition, London: Edw. Dod & Nath. Ekins, published 1650, Preface

Forms of colourish

third-person singular presentcolourishes
present participlecolourishing
past participlecolourished
pastcolourished

Questions about colourish

What does colourish mean?
Colourish means a substance used in gilding to brighten the finish of the gilded object.
What part of speech is colourish?
Colourish can be a noun or a verb.

Words near colourish in the dictionary

  1. colourise
  2. colourised
  3. colouriser
  4. colourisers
  5. colourises
  6. colourish
  7. colourishing
  8. colourising
  9. colourism
  10. colourisms
  11. colourist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: colourish (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: “colourish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/colourish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.