• IPA: /ˈsæ.ləʊ/

sallow (comparative sallower, superlative sallowest)

1. (of skin) Yellowish.
   1. (most regions, of light skin) Of a sickly pale colour.
      • circa 1594 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 3,

        Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine

        Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!

      • 1770, Henry Brooke (writer), The Fool of Quality, Dublin, Volume 5, p. 162,

        […] 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.

      • 1876, George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Book 8, Chapter 62,

        Once a handsome face, with bright color, it was now sallow and deep-lined […]

      • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546 ↗; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], OCLC 2666860 ↗, page 0091 ↗:

        Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and was very clean. ¶ There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.

      • 1937, Virginia Woolf, The Years, New York: Harcourt, Brace, “1880,” p. 64,

        […] there was something owl-like about the eyes, round which there was a sallow, hollow depression.

   2. (Ireland) Of a tan colour, associated with people from southern Europe or East Asia.
      • 2007, David McWilliams, "[https://web.archive.org/web/20151016164453/http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2007/12/23/we-must-begin-the-culture-debate We must begin the culture debate]", 23 December:

        The girls are mostly Slavic-pretty, long-limbed with high cheekbones, sallow skin and green eyes. They are the closest thing to supermodels that Mulhuddart has ever seen.

      • 2012, Aisling, "[https://web.archive.org/web/20130921081717/http://beaut.ie/2012/am-i-pink-or-yellow-how-to-choose-the-right-foundation-tone-and-what-is-the-deal-with-mac-foundations/ Am I pink or yellow? How to choose the right foundation tone. And what is the deal with Mac foundations?]" beaut.ie (17 January):

        A yellow undertone is often found on people with sallow skin – e.g. Asian.

      • 2012, Billy Keane, "I feel so much for Mickey. Maybe there is peace for him in sport ↗", Irish Independent (13 June):

        She had such lovely sallow skin, the handsome high cheekbones of the north with the brown conker-colour eyes and the dark silken hair.

2. (of a person) Having skin (especially on the face) of a sickly pale colour.
   • 1890, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, London: Ward Lock, 1891, Chapter 2, p. 33,

     Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.

   • 1920, D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 1996, Chapter 1, p. 14,

     She put her hand on the arm of her careworn, sallow father, and frothing her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal red carpet.

   • 1982, Saul Bellow, The Dean's December, New York: Pocket Books, 1983, Chapter 2, p. 20,

     In a matter of hours she was looking gaunt, and sallow: her face had a kind of negative color.

3. (of objects or dim light) Having a similar pale, yellowish colour.
   • 1839, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Chapter 20,

     The terrible descriptions were so real and vivid, that the sallow pages seemed to turn red with gore […]

   • 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, Boston: Roberts Brothers, “Velay,” p. 48,

     On the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape […]

   • 1934, George Orwell, Burmese Days, Chapter 5,

     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.

   • 1992, Edna O'Brien, Time and Tide (novel), New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Part 4, Chapter 44, p. 319,

     In a restaurant window little meringue cases, not quite sallow and not quite white.

   • 2011, Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child, New York: Knopf, Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 169,

     Now a sallow night-light glowed from the table and heaped large shadows on the beds and up the walls.

4. Dirty; murky.

• (sickly pale) See also Thesaurus:pallid

• French: cireux, jaunâtre
• Russian: земли́стый

sallow (sallows, present participle sallowing; past and past participle sallowed)

1. (intransitive) To become sallow.
   • 1912, Flora Annie Steel, King-Errant, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, Book 2, Chapter 6, p. 212,

     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.

   • 1918, Lola Ridge, “The Garden” in The Ghetto and Other Poems, New York: Huebsch, p. 93,

     I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase

     And watched each petal sallowing . . .

   • 1920, John Galsworthy, “‘Here We are Again!’”, in In Chancery, London: William Heinemann, OCLC 312632 ↗, part II, page 225 ↗:

     His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know about his face.

   • 1977, Robert Lowell, “Death of a Critic” in Day by Day, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 48,

     My maiden reviews,

     once the verbal equivalent of murder,

     are now a brief, compact pile,

     almost as old as I.

     They fall apart sallowing,

     their stiff pages

     chip like dry leaves

     flying the tree that fed them.

2. (transitive) To cause (someone or something) to become sallow.
   • 1835, Fanny Kemble (as Frances Anne Butler), Journal, London: John Murray, Volume 1, entry for 15 September, 1832, p. 105, footnote,

     The climate of this country is the scape-goat upon which all ill looks and ill health of the ladies is laid; but while they are brought up as effeminately as they are, take as little exercise, live in rooms like ovens during the winter, and marry as early as they do, it will appear evident that many causes combine with an extremely variable climate, to sallow their complexions, and destroy their constitutions.

   • 1889, George Washington Cable, Strange True Stories of Louisiana, New York: Scribner, “How I Got them,” p. 10,

     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 […] ?

   • 1918, Edna Ferber, Cheerful — By Request, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 9, p. 252,

     Mary Gowd, with her frumpy English hat and her dreadful English fringe, and her brick-red English cheeks, which not even the enervating Italian sun, the years of bad Italian food or the damp and dim little Roman room had been able to sallow.

   • 1940, Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again, Garden City, NY: Sun Dial, 1942, Book 2, Chapter 11, pp. 169-170,

     All she knew was that she had been stiffened and thickened by the same years that had given the other woman added grace and suppleness, that her skin had been dried and sallowed by the same lights and weathers that had added luster to the radiant beauty of the other […]

sallow (plural sallows)

1. A European willow, Salix caprea, that has broad leaves, large catkins and tough wood.
   • circa 1553 Humphrey Llwyd (translator), The Treasury of Healthe, London: William Coplande, Remedies, Chapter 44,

     I[f] a man eate the flowers of a sallow or wyllowe tree, or of a Poplet tree, they wyl make cold al the heate of carnall lust in hym.

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London: William Ponsonbie, Book 4, Canto 5, p. 75,

     And fast beside a little brooke did pas

     Of muddie water, that like puddle stanke,

     By which few crooked sallowes grew in ranke:

   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, London: W. Taylor, pp. 125-126,

     […] 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 […]

   • 1819 September 19​, John Keats, “To Autumn”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: Printed [by Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, OCLC 927360557 ↗, stanza 3, page 139 ↗:

     Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows, borne aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; [...]

   • 1914, D. H. Lawrence, “The Shades of Spring” in The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, London: Duckworth, p. 158,

     Now, everything irritated him: the two sallows, one all gold and perfume and murmur, one silver-green and bristly, reminded him, that here he had taught her about pollination.

2. A willow twig or branch.
   • circa 1390s Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, lines 655-658,

     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!

   • 1564, William Bullein, A Dialogue Bothe Pleasaunte and Pietifull Wherein Is a Goodly Regimente against the Feuer Pestilence with a Consolacion and Comfort against Death, London: John Kingston, [p. 22b],

     […] set Sallowes about the bedde, besprinkled with vineger and rose water.

   • 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:

   • 1822, Maria Edgeworth, Frank: A Sequel to Frank in Early Lessons, Cambridge, Volume I, p. 111,

     He stuck a number of sallows in a circle, at equal distances, in the grass; the circle was the size which he wished the basket to be. He then began to weave other sallows between these, in a manner which Frank easily learned to imitate […]

   • 1867, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Adirondacs” in May-Day, and Other Pieces, Boston: Ticknor & Fields; p. 49,

     The sallow knows the basketmaker’s thumb;

     The oar, the guide’s.

• (Salix caprea) goat willow

• French: saule
• Russian: и́ва козья