perse
UK/pɜːs/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
British/pəːs/
perse noun: a very dark (almost black) purple or blue-gray colour. Also the obsolete form of pierce.
Noun
perse (countable and uncountable, plural perses)
Adjective
perse
- Very dark greyish (almost blackish) purple or blue.
Proper noun (1) capitalized: Perse
Perse
- An Oceanid, (one of the three thousand daughters of the Titans' Oceanus and Tethys), and the wife of the sun god, Helios, by whom she is the mother of Aeetes, Perses, Pasiphae, and Circe. One of her many sisters is Amphitrite, (the wife of Poseidon). Perse is also closely identified with Hecate.
- Synonyms:
- Perseis
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Perse
Perse
- A rare surname transferred from the given name.
Also used as
perse is also the obsolete form of pierce.
Synonyms of perse
- Perseis
Forms of perse
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | perses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | perses |
| present participle | persing |
| past participle | persed |
| past | persed |
| past participle | perst |
| past | perst |
Origin of perse
From Middle English pers, from Old French, from Medieval Latin persus, back-formed from Persicus (“Persian”), from Ancient Greek Περσικός (Persikós). Compare peach.
Borrowed from Ancient Greek Πέρση (Pérsē), literally "destroyer", from the verb πέρθω (pérthō, “to destroy”). Compare Perses.
A variant of Piers.
Words that rhyme with perse
36 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- purse
- worse
- -verse
- coerce
- converse
- excurse
- immerse
- multiverse
- obverse
- terce
- terse
- amerce
- asperse
- herse
- neurodiverse
- reimburse
- transverse
- a blessing and a curse
- absterse
- accurse
- costotransverse
- demerse
- disburse
- Erse
- intertransverse
- megadiverse
- murse
- nontransverse
- pretransverse
- public purse
- recurse
- renverse
- sperse
- submerse
- subtransverse
- thurse
Questions about perse
- What does perse mean?
- Perse means a very dark (almost black) purple or blue-gray colour.
- What part of speech is perse?
- Perse can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce perse?
- Perse is pronounced /pɜːs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of perse?
- The plural of perse is perses.
Words near perse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: perse (page history and authors); Perse (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-purse.ogg.
Cite this entry: “perse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/perse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.