Word.ws English Dictionary

tawnying

tawnying is the present participle and gerund of tawny.

Meaning of tawny

Verb

tawny (third-person singular simple present tawnies, present participle tawnying, simple past and past participle tawnied)

  1. (transitive) To cause (someone or something) to have a light brown to brownish orange colour; to tan, to tawn.
    • So many friends, their friendſhips daily breake, / That fevve are faithfull, if that fevve be any: / The Sunne ſo ſoone, the painted face vvill tavvny.1602, Nicholas Breton, The Mothers Blessing, London: […] T[homas] C[reede] for Iohn Smethick, […], →OCLC, signature [D4], recto
  2. (intransitive) To become a light brown to brownish orange colour; to tan, to tawn.
    • The countenance alone bespoke the years and the cares of John M‘Whirter. The deep wrinkled brow—the cheek plaited, and tawnied in the sun and the frosts of the north— […]1825, chapter XI, in The Abduction; or, The Adventures of Major Sarney: A Story of the Times of Charles the Second. […], volume II, London: […] [William Clowes] for Charles Knight, […], →OCLC, page...

See all 12 meanings of tawny

Questions about tawnying

What is tawnying the present participle and gerund of?
Tawnying is the present participle and gerund of tawny.

Words near tawnying in the dictionary

  1. tawny pipit
  2. tawny pipits
  3. tawny-breasted tinamou
  4. tawny-breasted tinamous
  5. Tawnya
  6. tawnying
  7. tawnys
  8. TAWOG
  9. Tawonga
  10. Tawonga South
  11. tawpie

Source and license

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