English
yellow
Etymology

From Middle English yelow, from Old English ġeolwe, oblique form of Old English ġeolu, from Proto-West Germanic *gelu, from Proto-Germanic *gelwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃wos, from *ǵʰelh₃- ("gleam, yellow").

Compare Welsh gwelw, Latin helvus, Irish geal, Italian giallo Lithuanian žalias, Ancient Greek χλωρός, Persian زرد, Sanskrit हरि, Russian жёлтый, Russian зелёный. Cognate with German gelb, Dutch geel.

The verb is from Old English ġeolwian, from the adjective.

Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ˈjɛl.əʊ/
  • (America) enPR: yĕl′ō, IPA: /ˈjɛl.oʊ/
  • (dialect) IPA: /ˈjɛl.ɚ/
  • (dated, Southern US folk speech) IPA: /ˈjɛlə/, /ˈjælə/, /ˈjɑlə/, /ˈjɪlə/, /ˈjʌlə/
Adjective

yellow (comparative yellower, superlative yellowest)

  1. Of a yellow hue.
    Antonyms: nonyellow, unyellow
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC ↗, line 434:
      A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought / First fruits, the green ear and the yellow sheaf.
    • 1827, [John Keble], “Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity”, in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume II, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [B]y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC ↗, page 85 ↗:
      Red o'er the forest glows the setting sun, / The line of yellow light dies fast away / That crown'd the eastern copse, and chill and dun / Falls on the moor the brief November day.
    • 1911, J. Milton Hayes, The green eye of the little yellow god:
      There's a one-eyed yellow idol / To the north of Kathmandu; / There's a little marble cross below the town; / And a brokenhearted woman / Tends the grave of 'Mad' Carew, / While the yellow god for ever gazes down.
    • 1962 (quoting c. 1398 text), Hans Kurath & Sherman M. Kuhn, editors, Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-01044-8, page 1242:
      dorrẹ̅, dōrī adj. & n. […] Golden or reddish-yellow […] (a. 1398) *Trev. Barth. 59b/a: ȝelouȝ colour [of urine] […] tokeneþ febleness of hete […] dorrey & citrine & liȝt red tokeneþ mene.
  2. (informal) Lacking courage.
    Synonyms: cowardly
    • 1951, J. D. Salinger, chapter 13, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC ↗:
      What you should be is not yellow at all. If you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it.
    • 1975, Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
      You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you!
  3. (publishing, journalism) Characterized by sensationalism, lurid content, and doubtful accuracy.
  4. (chiefly, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur, of the skin) Of a hue attributed to Far East Asians, especially the Chinese.
    • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC ↗:
      They were all tall and all handsome, though they varied in their degree of darkness of skin, some being as dark as Mahomed, and some as yellow as a Chinese.
  5. (chiefly, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) Far East Asian relating to Asian people.
    • 1913, Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu‎:
      Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.
  6. (dated, Australia, offensive) Of mixed Aboriginal and Caucasian ancestry.
    • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VI, in Capricornia‎, page 64:
      "Eh, Oscar—you hear about your yeller nephew?".
    • 1965, Mudrooroo, Wild Cat Falling, HarperCollins, published 2001, page 74:
      A big full-blood gin cottoned onto me. “Give us a drink, yeller feller.”
  7. (dated, US) Synonym of high yellow
  8. (UK politics) Related to the Liberal Democrats.
    yellow constituencies
  9. (politics) Related to the Free Democratic Party (Germany); a political party in Germany.
    the black-yellow coalition
Translations Translations Noun

yellow (plural yellows)

  1. The colour of sunflower petals and lemons; the colour obtained by mixing green and red light, or by subtracting blue from white light.
     
  2. (US) The mid light in a set of three traffic lights, the lighting of which indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection if it is safe to do so.
  3. (snooker) One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of 2 points.
  4. (pocket billiards) One of two groups of object balls, or a ball from that group, as used in the principally British version of pool that makes use of unnumbered balls (the (yellow(s) and red(s)); contrast stripes and solids in the originally American version with numbered balls).
  5. (sports) A yellow card.
  6. Any of various pierid butterflies of the subfamily Coliadinae, especially the yellow coloured species. Compare sulphur.
Synonyms
  • (light wavelengths) xantho- (xanth-)
  • (intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights) amber (British)
Antonyms
  • (antonym(s) of “intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights”): red, green
Translations Verb

yellow (yellows, present participle yellowing; simple past and past participle yellowed)

  1. (intransitive) To become yellow or more yellow.
  2. (transitive) To make (something) yellow or more yellow.
Translations Translations

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