colored
/ˈkʌləɹd/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.19 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Belonging to a multiracial ethnic group or category, having ancestry from more than one of the racial groups of Southern Africa (black, white, and Asian). (Under apartheid, used as a metadescription for mixed-race people and peoples such as the Cape Coloureds.)
American usage
Example Sentences
- "Wash colored items separately from whites and darks to prevent the colors from bleeding."
- "The room was red, with a dark-colored rug."
- "Nara and its deer are so closely associated that the light-brown colored animals are pictured in the city’s tourism ads, on buses, train tickets and more."
- "The singer wore a colored shirt."
- "Mr. Brewer gave me his version of the history of the Conference of Studio Unions. It appeared to me then and appears to me now to have been a very colored view."
- "But by and large, a majority of Sanduskians never read any newspaper other than the local journal and I am convinced that they get a far more colored view of national news than they did when the city had competing dailies."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *-ōs Proto-Indo-European *ḱélōs Proto-Italic *kelōs Old Latin colōs Latin color Old French color Anglo-Norman colurbor. Middle English colour English color English -ed English colored From color + -ed.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkʌləɹd/
- British English: /ˈkʌləd/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
anticolored
bicolored
bicoloured
brickcolored
brickcoloured
cherrycolored
cherrycoloured
countercolored
countercoloured
decolored
decoloured
discolored
Phrases
ash-colored
aurora-colored
aurora-coloured
clay-colored
clay-coloured
clay-colored thrush
colored egg
coloured egg