sallow

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Yellowish.

   • Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
   • […] were it not that his Complexion is sallow, and that he is something short of a Leg, and Blind of one Eye, he would positively be the most lovely of all the human Species.
   • Once a handsome face, with bright color, it was now sallow and deep-lined […]
2. 2

   Having skin (especially on the face) of a sickly pale colour.

   • Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.
   • She put her hand on the arm of her careworn, sallow father, and frothing her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal red carpet.
   • In a matter of hours she was looking gaunt, and sallow: her face had a kind of negative color.
3. 3

   Having a similar pale, yellowish colour.

   • The terrible descriptions were so real and vivid, that the sallow pages seemed to turn red with gore […]
   • On the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape […]
   • Scenes like this — the sallow evening light, the old Indian cropping grass, the creak of the cartwheels, the streaming egrets — were more native to him than England.
4. ›+ 5 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      Foul

      Foul; murky; sickly.

      • The boat's deck was covered in moss, and its warm, sallow water was filled with lichens that gave off an eerie green glow.
      • My mouth went dry and a sallow feeling descended upon me.
   2. 5

      To become sallow.

      • The tan of his sunburnt face and hands contrasted sadly with the sallowing skin of the girl-wife, who, despite his care, was sinking under her task of son-bearing.
      • I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase And watched each petal sallowing . . .
      • His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know about his face.
   3. 6

      To cause (someone or something) to become sallow.

      • But would a pretender carry his or her cunning to the extreme of fortifying the manuscript in every possible way against the sallowing touch of time[…]?
   4. 7

      A European willow, Salix caprea, that has broad leaves, large catkins and tough wood.

      • And fast beside a little brooke did pas Of muddie water, that like puddle stanke, By which few crooked sallowes grew in ranke:
      • […] it came into my Mind, That the Twigs of that Tree from whence I cut my Stakes that grew, might possibly be as tough as the Sallows, and Willows, and Osiers in England […]
   5. 8

      A willow twig or branch.

      • Who-so that buildeth his hous al of salwes, And priketh his blinde hors over the falwes, And suffreth his wyf to go seken halwes, Is worthy to been hanged on the galwes!
      • 1767, Francis Fawkes (translator), The Idylliums of Theocritus, London, for the author, Idyllium 16, p. 156, For lo! their spears the Syracusians wield, And bend the pliant sallow to a shield:

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