Word.ws English Dictionary

obliterative coloration

obliterative coloration noun: the coloration of an animal that makes it blend into the background; camouflage.

Noun

obliterative coloration (uncountable)

  1. The coloration of an animal that makes it blend into the background; camouflage.
    • We have here, as far as these patterns go, a complete inversion of the regular obliterative coloration.1909, Gerald Handerson Thayer, Concealing-coloration in the Animal Kingdom, page 147
    • The problem with the topic of obliterative coloration is that it is very well accepted despite there being so few empirical tests of the phenomenon.2005, Timothy M. Caro, Antipredator Defenses in Birds and Mammals, page 60

Forms of obliterative coloration

alternative formobliterative colouration

Origin of obliterative coloration

Coined by American artist Gerald Handerson Thayer

Questions about obliterative coloration

What does obliterative coloration mean?
Obliterative coloration means the coloration of an animal that makes it blend into the background; camouflage.
What part of speech is obliterative coloration?
Obliterative coloration is a noun.

Words near obliterative coloration in the dictionary

  1. obliterationism
  2. obliterations
  3. obliterative
  4. obliterative assimilation
  5. obliterative bronchiolitis
  6. obliterative coloration
  7. obliterative colouration
  8. obliterative procedure
  9. obliterative subsumption
  10. obliteratively
  11. obliterator

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: obliterative coloration (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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