beige
/ˈbeɪʒ/ noun, adjective
Forms beiges beiger beigest
- noun A colour, variously defined from a pale brown, to a yellow greyish off-white.
- noun Debeige; a kind of woollen or mixed dress goods.
- adjective Having a slightly yellowish gray colour, as that of unbleached wool.
- adjective (informal, originally US) Comfortably dull and unadventurous, in a way that suggests middle-class suburbia.
Synonyms
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French (dialectal) beige, from Old French bege (“color of undyed wool or cotton”), from an Alpine language (compare Franco-Provençal bézho, Romansch besch (“dull grey”)), from Vulgar Latin *bysseus (“cottony grey”) (compare French bis, Catalan bis, Italian bigio), from Late Latin byssus (“cotton”), from Ancient Greek βύσσος (bússos, “cotton homespun”), from Semitic (compare Hebrew/Aramaic בוץ (būṣ)). Doublet of bice.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Debeige.
Etymology [F.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “beige”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details