brown
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See also: Brown
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Middle English broun, from Old English brūn (“brown; dark; dusky”), from Proto-Germanic *brūnaz (compare West Frisian brún, Dutch bruin, German braun), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (compare Ancient Greek φρύνη (phrúnē), φρῦνος (phrûnos, “toad”); Latin brunneus (“brown”)), compare Lithuanian bė́ras (“brown”), Sanskrit बभ्रु (babhrú, “reddish-brown”)).
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
brown (countable and uncountable, plural browns)
- (countable and uncountable) A colour like that of chocolate or coffee.
- The browns and greens in this painting give it a nice woodsy feel.
- brown colour:
- (snooker, countable) One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of 4 points.
- (uncountable) Black tar heroin.
- (slang, archaic, countable) A copper coin.
- (sometimes capitalised, countable) A person of Middle Eastern, Latino or South Asian descent; a brown-skinned person; someone of mulatto or biracial appearance.
Derived terms[edit]
Descendants[edit]
Translations[edit]
colour
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Adjective[edit]
brown (comparative browner or more brown, superlative brownest or most brown)
- Having a brown colour.
- Antonym: nonbrown
- (obsolete) Gloomy.
- (sometimes capitalized) Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin.
- (US) Latino
- (of Asians) South Asian
- (of East Asians) Southeast Asian
Descendants[edit]
Translations[edit]
having a brown colour
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Verb[edit]
brown (third-person singular simple present browns, present participle browning, simple past and past participle browned)
- (intransitive) To become brown.
- Fry the onions until they brown.
- 2006, Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 269:
- The chicken was browning nicely, the skin beginning to crisp and take on the toasty tones of oiled wood.
- (cooking, transitive) To cook something until it becomes brown.
- Brown the onions in a large frying pan.
- (intransitive, transitive) To tan.
- Light-skinned people tend to brown when exposed to the sun.
- (transitive) To make brown or dusky.
- 1807, Joel Barlow, The Columbiad:
- A trembling twilight o'er the welkin moves, / Browns the dim void and darkens deep the groves.
- (transitive) To give a bright brown colour to, as to gun barrels, by forming a thin coating of oxide on their surface.
- 1860, Andrew Ure, Ure’s Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines[1], page 463:
- It is mixed uniformly with olive oil, and rubbed upon the iron slightly heated, which is afterwards exposed to the air, till the wished-for degree of browning is produced.
- (demography, transitive, intransitive, slang, ethnic slur, usually derogatory, offensive) To turn progressively more Middle Eastern, Hispanic or Latino, in the context of the population of a geographic region.
- the browning of America
Translations[edit]
to become brown
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to cook until brown
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to tan — see tan
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Derived terms[edit]
terms derived from "brown"
Related terms[edit]
See also[edit]
| Colors in English · colors, colours (layout · text) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| white | gray, grey | black | ||
| red ; crimson | orange ; brown | yellow ; cream | ||
| lime | green | mint | ||
| cyan ; teal | azure, sky blue | blue | ||
| violet ; indigo | magenta ; purple | pink | ||
Welsh[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
Adjective[edit]
brown (feminine singular brown, plural brown)
Mutation[edit]
| Welsh mutation | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| radical | soft | nasal | aspirate |
| brown | frown | mrown | unchanged |
| Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs. | |||
See also[edit]
| Colors in Welsh · lliwiau (layout · text) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gwyn | llwyd | du | ||
| coch ; rhudd | oren, melyngoch ; brown | melyn ; melynwyn | ||
| gwyrdd leim | gwyrdd | |||
| gwyrddlas ; glaswyrdd | asur, gwynlas | glas | ||
| fioled ; indigo | majenta ; porffor | pinc | ||
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English terms inherited from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
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- English lemmas
- English nouns
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