Word.ws English Dictionary

Egyptian blue

Egyptian blue noun: a light blue pigment made from calcium copper tetrasilicate (“CaCuSi₄O₁₀”), the first artificial pigment, used by Egyptians for over 3 millennia, before dying out during the Roman Empire; one of the few alternates to lapis lazuli during ancient times.

egyptian blue: a light blue pigment made from calcium copper tetrasilicate (“CaCuSi₄O₁₀”), the first artificial...
Image: Davide Mauro, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Egyptian blue (countable and uncountable, plural Egyptian blues)

  1. A light blue pigment made from calcium copper tetrasilicate (“CaCuSi₄O₁₀”), the first artificial pigment, used by Egyptians for over 3 millennia, before dying out during the Roman Empire; one of the few alternates to lapis lazuli during ancient times.

Forms of Egyptian blue

pluralEgyptian blues

Origin of Egyptian blue

From Egyptian + blue, from being a blue invented by Ancient Egyptians.

Questions about Egyptian blue

What does Egyptian blue mean?
Egyptian blue means a light blue pigment made from calcium copper tetrasilicate (“CaCuSi₄O₁₀”), the first artificial pigment, used by Egyptians for over 3 millennia, before dying out during the Roman Empire; one of the few alternates to lapis lazuli during ancient times.
What part of speech is Egyptian blue?
Egyptian blue is a noun.
What is the plural of Egyptian blue?
The plural of Egyptian blue is Egyptian blues.

Words near Egyptian blue in the dictionary

  1. Egyptian
  2. Egyptian Arabic
  3. Egyptian Aramaic
  4. Egyptian bean
  5. Egyptian beans
  6. Egyptian blue
  7. Egyptian blues
  8. Egyptian chlorosis
  9. Egyptian clover
  10. Egyptian cobra
  11. Egyptian cobras

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Egyptian blue (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:

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