color

noun colors · colour · usage notes

1. uncountable The spectral composition of visible light. Humans and birds can perceive color.
2. countable A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class. Most languages have names for the colors black, white, red, and green.
3. uncountable Hue as opposed to achromatic colors (black, white and grays). The accident victim's face was white, drained of all color.
4. countable, uncountable These hues as used in color television or films, color photographs, etc (as opposed to the shades of grey used in black-and-white television). This film is broadcast in color.
5. countable, uncountable Any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms, including azure, gules, sable, and vert.
6. countable, uncountable A paint. The artist took out her colors and began work on a landscape.
7. uncountable Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity. Color has been a sensitive issue in many societies.
8. countable, uncountable Skin color, noted as normal, jaundiced, cyanotic, flush, mottled, pale, or ashen as part of the skin signs assessment.
9. countable, uncountable A flushed appearance of blood in the face; redness of complexion. […] her very embarrassment wore a graceful air; her high colour had softened down to a warm, delicate tint; and her dress, which looked beautifully new and fresh, was in good taste, and showed her off to advantage.
10. countable, figuratively, uncountable Richness of expression; detail or flavour that is likely to generate interest or enjoyment. color commentator
11. countable, in plural, uncountable A standard or banner. The loss of their colors destroyed the regiment's morale.
12. countable, in plural, uncountable The flag of a nation or team. The colors were raised over the new territory.
13. countable, in plural, uncountable Gang insignia. Both of the perpetrators were wearing colors.
14. countable, in plural, uncountable An award for sporting achievement, particularly within a school or university. He was awarded colors for his football.
15. countable, in plural, uncountable The morning ceremony of raising the flag.
16. countable, uncountable A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons; color charge.
17. uncountable A third-order measure of derivative price sensitivity, expressed as the rate of change of gamma with respect to time, or equivalently the rate of change of charm with respect to changes in the underlying asset price.
18. countable, uncountable The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia )
19. countable, uncountable Any of the colored balls excluding the reds.
20. countable, uncountable A front or facade; an ostensible truth actually false; pretext. At the far end of the continuum, Roger Seagraves collected personal items from people he'd murdered, or assassinated rather, since he'd done it under the color of serving his country.
21. countable, uncountable An appearance of right or authority; color of law. Under color of law, he managed to bilk taxpayers of millions of dollars.
22. countable, uncountable Gold, particles of gold found when prospecting. He smelted Wells’s colour before it was valued, and by the time anybody saw it, it had been poured into bars and stamped with the Reserve seal.
23. countable, slang, uncountable To bleed, either through injury or blading. Usually prefaced with "get". The local hero is getting color in tonight's spectacle.
24. countable, uncountable Timbre, often in relation to orchestration. In other words, Brahms saves the higher violin color for the more important foreground statement and assigns the soft swirling background to middle-register violins and violas, while the cellos dominate in their best voice.
25. countable, uncountable The quality of a particular vowel sound.

Similar: blee, color, hue, shade, tincture, tint

adjective colour · usage notes

1. US, not comparable Conveying color, as opposed to shades of gray. Color television and movies were considered a great improvement over black and white.

verb colors · coloring · colored · colour · usage notes

1. US, transitive To give something color. We could color the walls red.
2. US, transitive To cause (a pipe, especially a meerschaum) to take on a brown or black color, by smoking.
3. US, intransitive To apply colors to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using colored markers or crayons. My kindergartener loves to color.
4. US To become red through increased blood flow. Her face colored as she realized her mistake.
5. US To affect without completely changing. That interpretation certainly colors my perception of the book.
6. US, informal To attribute a quality to; to portray (as). Color me confused.
7. US To assign colors to the vertices of a graph (or the regions of a map) so that no two vertices connected by an edge (regions sharing a border) have the same color. Can this graph be 2-colored?
8. US, usually To affect the quality of a speech sound, especially a vowel. Many languages have a "neutral", roughly central vowel like /a/ or /ə/ which can be colored to a back, rounded vowel like [o] by an adjacent labialized consonant, or to a front, unrounded vowel like [e] by an adjacent palatalized consonant.