Word.ws English Dictionary

sepia

/ˈsiːpiə/

sepia noun: a dark brown pigment made from the secretions of the cuttlefish.

sepia: a dark brown pigment made from the secretions of the cuttlefish
Image: Khagani Hasanov1988, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sepia (countable and uncountable, plural sepias)

  1. (uncountable) A dark brown pigment made from the secretions of the cuttlefish.
    • Sepia had some use in ancient times as a writing ink, and in modern times has has occasionally been used as a pigment, but it never attained any popularity, as it is extremely fugitive.1930, A[loys] Merz, M[orris] Rea Paul, “Sepia”, in “Notes on Color Names”, in A Dictionary of Color, New York City: McGraw-Hill, page 179
  2. (uncountable) A dark, slightly reddish, brown colour.
  3. (broadly, countable) A sepia-coloured drawing or photograph.
  4. (archaic, countable) A cuttlefish.

Adjective

sepia (comparative more sepia, superlative most sepia)

  1. Of a dark reddish-brown colour.
    • Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.1963, Margery Allingham, “Miss Thyrza’s Chair”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 41
    • Only now did he realise how few colours there had been at the end of the universe. The world had been sepia, drained of colour and light.1998 November 22, Lance Parkin, “Infinity and Beyond” (chapter 12), in The Infinity Doctors, BBC Books, →ISBN, page 209

sepia meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Odia

sepia in Hindi

colour
सीपिया sīpiyā

sepia in Tamil

கருமை நீர்மம், பழுப்பு வர்ணம்

sepia in Kannada

ಕೆಂಪುಕಂದು

sepia in Odia

sepia
ଖଇରା khairā
More languagesFewer languages
sepia in Tagalog
sepya
sepia in Persian
سپیداجی sapidaji

Forms of sepia

Noun
pluralsepias
Adjective
comparativemore sepia
superlativemost sepia

Origin of sepia

Borrowed from Latin sēpia (“cuttlefish”), from Ancient Greek σηπία (sēpía). Cognate with Italian seppia, Portuguese siba, and Spanish sepia.

Words formed from sepia

Questions about sepia

What does sepia mean?
Sepia means a dark brown pigment made from the secretions of the cuttlefish.
What is sepia in Hindi?
Sepia in Hindi is सीपिया (sīpiyā). See Sepia meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is sepia?
Sepia can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce sepia?
Sepia is pronounced /ˈsiːpiə/.
What is the plural of sepia?
The plural of sepia is sepias.

Words near sepia in the dictionary

  1. sephiric
  2. sephirot
  3. sephiroth
  4. sephirothic
  5. Sephu
  6. sepia
  7. sepiaceous
  8. sepiadariid
  9. sepiadariids
  10. sepialike
  11. sepian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sepia (page history and authors); sepia (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sepia (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ଖଇରା (Odia) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sepia.wav.

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