yellow

Alternative forms

• yeallow (obsolete), yeller (dialect)

Etymology

From Middle English yelwe, yelou, from Old English ġeolu, ġeolwe, from Proto-Germanic *gelwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃wos (compare Welsh gwelw (“pale”), Latin helvus (“dull yellow”)), from *ǵʰelh₃- (“gleam, yellow”) (compare Irish geal (“white, bright”), Lithuanian žalias (“green”), Ancient Greek χλωρός (khlōrós, “light green”), Persian زر‎ (zar, “yellow”), Sanskrit हरि (hari, “greenish-yellow”)). Cognate with German gelb (“yellow”).

The verb is from Old English ġeolwian, from the adjective.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈjɛl.əʊ/
• (General American) enPR: yĕl′ō, IPA^(key): /ˈjɛl.oʊ/
• (dialect) IPA^(key): /ˈjɛl.ɚ/
• (dated, Southern US folk speech) IPA^(key): /ˈjælə/, /ˈjɑlə/, /ˈjɪlə/, /ˈjʌlə/^[1]

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (UK)

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• Rhymes: -ɛləʊ

Adjective

yellow (comparative yellower, superlative yellowest)

1. Having yellow as its colour.
   • Milton:

     A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought / First fruits, the green ear and the yellow sheaf.

   • Keble:

     The line of yellow light dies fast away.

   • 1911, J. Milton Hayes, "The green eye of the little yellow god,"

     There's a one-eyed yellow idol / To the north of Kathmandu; / There's a little marble cross below the town; / And a brokenhearted woman / Tends the grave of 'Mad' Carew, / While the yellow god for ever gazes down.

   • 1962 (quoting c. 1398 text), Hans Kurath & Sherman M. Kuhn, editors, Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-01044-8, page 1242:

     dorrẹ̅, dōrī adj. & n. […] Golden or reddish-yellow […] (a. 1398) *Trev. Barth. 59b/a: ȝelouȝ colour [of urine] […] tokeneþ febleness of hete […] dorrey & citrine & liȝt red tokeneþ mene.

2. (informal) Lacking courage.
   • 1951, J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 13:

     What you should be is not yellow at all. If you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it.

   • Monty Python

     You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you!

3. (publishing, journalism) Characterized by sensationalism, lurid content, and doubtful accuracy.
   • 2004, Doreen Carvajal, "Photo edict muffles gossipy press," International Herald Tribune, 4 Oct. (retrieved 29 July 2008),

     The denizens of the gossipy world of the pink press, purple prose and yellow tabloids are shivering over disputed photographs of Princess Caroline of Monaco.

4. (chiefly derogatory, offensive) Far East Asian (relating to Asian people).
5. (dated, Australia, offensive) Of mixed Aboriginal and Caucasian ancestry.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, Chapter VI, p. 64,

     "Eh, Oscar—you hear about your yeller nephew?".

6. (dated, US) High yellow.
   • 1933 September 9, James Thurber, “My Life and Hard Times—VI. A Sequence of Servants”, in The New Yorker:

     Charley threw her over for a yellow gal named Nancy: he never forgave Vashti for the vanishing from his life of a menace that had come to mean more to him than Vashti herself.

7. (Britain, politics) Related to the Liberal Democrats.
   • 2012 March 2, Andrew Grice, "Yellow rebels take on Clegg over NHS 'betrayal'", The Independent

   yellow constituencies

8. (politics) Related to the Free Democratic Party of Germany.

   the black-yellow coalition

Noun

yellow (plural yellows)

1. The colour of gold, butter, or a lemon; the colour obtained by mixing green and red light, or by subtracting blue from white light.
   • 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

     It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

2. (US) The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, the illumination of which indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection if it is safe to do so.
3. (snooker) One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of 2 points.
4. (pocket billiards) One of two groups of object balls, or a ball from that group, as used in the principally British version of pool that makes use of unnumbered balls (the (yellow(s) and red(s)); contrast stripes and solids in the originally American version with numbered balls).
5. (sports) A yellow card.
   • 2011 April 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Norwich 2 - 1 Nott'm Forest”, in BBC Sport‎:

     Andrew Surman fired in what proved to be a 37th-minute winner before Forest's Paul Konchesky saw red late on. That second yellow for the loan signing came in stoppage time and did not affect the outcome of a game which Norwich dominated.

Verb

yellow (third-person singular simple present yellows, present participle yellowing, simple past and past participle yellowed)

1. (intransitive) To become yellow or more yellow.
   • 1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York Review Books 2006, page 47:

     Then suddenly, with the least warning, the sky yellows and the Chergui blows in from the Sahara, stinging the eyes and choking with its sandy, sticky breath.

2. (transitive) To make (something) yellow or more yellow.

See also

• All pages with yellow as a prefix

References

Anagrams

• Yowell