Word.ws English Dictionary

purplette

purplette noun: a small specialty onion with burgundy skin.

Noun (1)

purplette (plural purplettes)

  1. A small specialty onion with burgundy skin.
    • Salad onions (try Paris silver skin or purplette), perfect for slicing into a salad, as well as pickling, or baby leeks, great raw, steamed or stir-fried (try King Richard or atal) are ridiculously easy to grow.2007 July 7, Laeticia Maklouf, “Salad roots manoeuvre”, in Malik Meer, editor, The Guardian, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, “Summer salad recipes” supplement, page 27, column 1
    • The yard is now almost entirely planted out in edibles. There are rare plants like golden marjoram, “social” garlic, shiso, white borage and four types of onion (red marble, purplette, cipolline, giant stemmed Japanese).2008 November 15, Laurie Black, “A kitchen garden: real(food)handbook”, in The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, N.S.W., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 42

Noun (2)

purplette (plural purplettes)

  1. (rare) A purple-haired person, especially a woman.
    • As for Josh Jochim, 11, he’ll try not to be too hyper and excited, especially when Lecoe, his fifth-grade teacher, along with the principal and superintendent all make good on their promise to color their hair purple if the school raised $1,000 for cancer research. […] Josh gave a speech Monday to...2006 May 5, Lauren Donovan, “Flasher [North Dakota]”, in The Bismarck Tribune, Bismarck, N.D., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1
    • I followed McGlade’s line of sight and saw another naked woman walk into the infirmary. Purple hair, in long pigtails. […] The purplette gave Tasty a deep kiss, then stroked my hair.2011 May 31, Joe Kimball, chapter 27, in Timecaster, New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN

Examples of purplette in a sentence

  • 1/2 tbsp purplettes, green onions, or chives, minced2017 January 5, Maria Christina Rago, “Stuffed Nasturtiums”, in Organic Kitchen […], Simply Media, →ISBN:
  • His teacher, Tracy Lecoe, the brunette soon to be a purplette, said the boy is not much of a speechmaker.2006 May 5, Lauren Donovan, “Flasher [North Dakota]”, in The Bismarck Tribune, Bismarck, N.D., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1:
  • Her purple hair cut at her shoulders. […] The purplette sucked her lips together as if she had just taken a bite out of a lime.2019 November 24, Vicky Jayne, chapter 32, in Lucifer’s Darling, Henderson, Nev.: Typewriter Pub, →ISBN:

Forms of purplette

pluralpurplettes

Origin of purplette

From purple + -ette (diminutive suffix).

From purple + -ette (“a person, especially a woman, with the specified hair color”), after brunette.

Questions about purplette

What does purplette mean?
Purplette means a small specialty onion with burgundy skin.
How do you use purplette in a sentence?
1/2 tbsp purplettes, green onions, or chives, minced
What part of speech is purplette?
Purplette is a noun.
What is the plural of purplette?
The plural of purplette is purplettes.

Words near purplette in the dictionary

  1. purplest
  2. purpletop
  3. purpletop vervain
  4. purpletop vervains
  5. purpletops
  6. purplette
  7. purplettes
  8. purpletuft
  9. purpletufts
  10. purplewash
  11. purplewashed

Source and license

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