complexion
See also: complexión and complex ion
English
Alternative forms
- complection (obsolete)
Etymology
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From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle English complexion (“temperament”), from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old French complexion, (deprecated template usage) [etyl] French complexion, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin complexiō (“a combination, connection, period”), from complecti, past participle complexus (“to entwine, encompass”)
Pronunciation
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Audio (GA): (file) - Rhymes: -ɛkʃən
- Hyphenation: com‧plex‧ion
Noun
complexion (plural complexions)
- (obsolete, medicine) The combination of humours making up one's physiological "temperament", being either hot or cold, and moist or dry.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Ne ever is he wont on ought to feed / But todes and frogs, his pasture poysonous, / Which in his cold complexion doe breed / A filthy blood […]
- 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC:
- “Indeed, sir,” answered the lady, with some warmth, “I cannot think there is anything easier than to cheat an old woman with a profession of love, when her complexion is amorous; and, though she is my aunt, I must say there never was a more liquorish one than her ladyship. […]
- The quality, colour, or appearance of the skin on the face.
- a rugged complexion; a sunburnt complexion
- 1596-99?, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act II, scene i:
- Prince of Morocco: Mislike me not for my complexion, / The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun, / To whom I am a neighbour, and near bred. [...]
- Template:RQ:EHough PrqsPrc
- This new-comer was a man who in any company would have seemed striking. In complexion fair, and with blue or gray eyes, he was tall as any Viking, as broad in the shoulder.
- (figuratively) The outward appearance of something.
- Outlook, attitude, or point of view.
- 1844, E. A. Poe, Marginalia
- But the purely marginal jottings, done with no eye to the Memorandum Book, have a distinct complexion, and not only a distinct purpose, but none at all; this it is which imparts to them a value.
- 1844, E. A. Poe, Marginalia
- (loanword, especially in scientific works translated from German) An arrangement.
- 1909, Ludwig Boltzmann, translated by Kim Sharp and Franz Matschinsky
- Second there is the level at which the energy or velocity components of each molecule are specified. He calls this a Komplexion, which we translate literally as complexion.
- 1909, Ludwig Boltzmann, translated by Kim Sharp and Franz Matschinsky
Synonyms
- See also Thesaurus:countenance
Related terms
Translations
appearance of the skin on the face
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Verb
complexion (third-person singular simple present complexions, present participle complexioning, simple past and past participle complexioned)
- (transitive) To give a colour to.
- 2003, Leland Krauth, Mark Twain & Company: Six Literary Relations (page 118)
- From the pale refinement of her genteel heroine to the sallow complexioning of poor white trash, Stowe colors her narrative with the hues of the body.
- 2003, Leland Krauth, Mark Twain & Company: Six Literary Relations (page 118)
Further reading
- “complexion”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “complexion”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Old French
Etymology
First known attestation circa 1120[1], borrowed from Latin complexiō.
Noun
complexion oblique singular, f (oblique plural complexions, nominative singular complexion, nominative plural complexions)
- (medicine) complexion (combination of humours making up one's physiological "temperament")
References
- ^ Etymology and history of “complexion”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (complession, supplement)
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