Word.ws English Dictionary

purpling

purpling is the present participle and gerund of purple.

Meaning of purple

Verb

purple (third-person singular simple present purples, present participle purpling, simple past and past participle purpled)

  1. (intransitive) To turn purple in colour.
    • [T]he Capri cliffs, the tops of which were still pink against the purpling sky.1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 143
  2. (transitive) To dye purple.
    • Year after year unto her feet, / She lying on her couch alone, / Across the purpled coverlet, / The maiden's jet-black hair has grown, […]1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Day-Dream. The Sleeping Palace.”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 152
  3. (transitive) To clothe in purple.

See all 25 meanings of purple

Questions about purpling

What is purpling the present participle and gerund of?
Purpling is the present participle and gerund of purple.

Words near purpling in the dictionary

  1. purplewort
  2. purpley
  3. purplier
  4. purpliest
  5. purpliness
  6. purpling
  7. purplish
  8. purplishly
  9. purplishness
  10. purply
  11. purpnin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: purpling (page history and authors); purple (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: “purpling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/purpling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.