Contextualizebeta

beige

noun
/ˈbeɪʒ/US/ˈbɛjʒ/

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.

  1. derived from βύσσος — “cotton homespun”
  2. derived from byssus — “cotton”
  3. derived from *bysseus✻
  4. derived from bege

Definitions

  1. A colour, variously defined from a pale brown, to a yellow greyish off-white.

  2. Debeige

    Debeige; a kind of woollen or mixed dress goods.

  3. Having a slightly yellowish gray colour, as that of unbleached wool.

    • Dagobert had only one customer, an American who wore square, rimless glasses and a beige suit and looked like a Wall Street tycoon.
    • Mr. Lauwaert of Sony said he realized that most consumers were not going to buy computers that cost far more than discount beige boxes.
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. Comfortably dull and unadventurous, in a way that suggests middle-class suburbia.

      • Think about it: he grew up in Iowa, the beigest of states, was doted on, loved generously by his parents, the top of his class, probably voted Most Handsome of 2000.
      • In the beigest parts of suburbia where I grew up, bridge was a game played by groups of parents in recreation rooms furnished with upright pianos and souvenir sombreros.
      • For a meal of relentlessly beige food, may I suggest the beigest of wines? That would be chardonnay, which will go beautifully with Melissa Clark’s chicken potpie.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for beige. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA