Word.ws English Dictionary

mauve

/mɔv//məʊv/

mauve noun: a rich purple synthetic dye, which faded easily, briefly popular c. 1859‒1873 and now called mauveine.

Noun

mauve (countable and uncountable, plural mauves)

  1. (historical) A rich purple synthetic dye, which faded easily, briefly popular c. 1859‒1873 and now called mauveine.
  2. A pale purple or violet colour, like the colour of the dye after it has faded.
    • Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons.1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter VIII, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 151

Adjective

mauve (comparative mauver or more mauve, superlative mauvest or most mauve)

  1. Having a pale purple colour.
    • [A]long their time-marked walls wistaria threw patches of mauve blossom.1936, F.J. Thwaites, chapter XXII, in The Redemption, Sydney: H. John Edwards, published 1940, page 222

mauve meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Kannada and Arabic

mauve in Urdu

نیلگوں ارغوانی

mauve in Bengali

ফিকে বেগুনি রঙ, মাভ রঙ

mauve in Kannada

ಕೆನ್ನೀಲಿ, ನೇರಿಳೆ ಬಣ್ಣ, ಊದಾ, ಕೆನ್ನೀಲಿಯ, ನೇರಿಳೆ ಬಣ್ಣದ, ನೇರಳೆ

mauve in Arabic

colour
بَنَفْسَجِيّ banafsajiyy
More languagesFewer languages
mauve in Persian
ارغوانی arġavâni

Examples of mauve in a sentence

  • For those seeking purply tones, the paint colors available include mauve, magenta, and grape.
  • He asked her to remove her scarfing, her neck-a-tee and her mauve pelerine.
  • She was wearing a mauve blouse, a matching mauve bordered sador and a plain muga mekhela.

All 17 example sentences with mauve

Forms of mauve

Noun
pluralmauves
Adjective
comparativemauver
comparativemore mauve
superlativemauvest
superlativemost mauve

Plural of mauve: mauves

Origin of mauve

Borrowed from French mauve (“mallow”), from Latin malva, which has a purple colour. Doublet of mallow. Coined in 1856 by the chemist William Henry Perkin, when he accidentally created the first aniline dye.

Words formed from mauve

Phrases with mauve

Words that rhyme with mauve

41 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mauve

What does mauve mean?
Mauve means a rich purple synthetic dye, which faded easily, briefly popular c. 1859‒1873 and now called mauveine.
What is mauve in Urdu?
Mauve in Urdu is نیلگوں ارغوانی. See Mauve meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is mauve?
Mauve can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce mauve?
Mauve is pronounced /məʊv/ (UK).
What is the plural of mauve?
The plural of mauve is mauves.

Words near mauve in the dictionary

  1. mauvais quart d'heure
  2. mauvais quarts d'heure
  3. mauvaise honte
  4. mauvaise langue
  5. mauvaniline
  6. mauve
  7. mauve box
  8. mauve boxes
  9. mauve stinger
  10. mauve stingers
  11. mauveine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mauve (page history and authors); mauve (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Mauve (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mauve (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-mauve.ogg, en-us-mauve.ogg.

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