Azure
nounA bright, clear shade of blue, like that of a cloudless sky.
How to spell azure
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce azure
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does azure mean?
- nounA bright, clear shade of blue, like that of a cloudless sky.
- adjectiveHaving a bright, clear blue colour.
Azure in a sentence
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noun
The designer painted the bedroom a soft azure to mimic the morning sky.
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adjective
The swimmers floated under an azure sky with no clouds in sight.
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noun
The brochure described the bay water as a brilliant azure.
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adjective
She chose an azure tile for the kitchen splashback.
Where does azure come from?
Language of origin: Arabic
Azure traces back to the Persian word lazhward, the name of a region famous for mining lapis lazuli, the prized deep blue stone. From there it passed into Arabic as lazaward, still meaning that blue stone and its colour. When the word travelled through Medieval Latin as lazur and on into Old French as azur, the opening l- was mistakenly treated as the article (as if l'azur meant 'the azure'), so it dropped away and left azure. English borrowed the French form in the 1300s, first in heraldry to name the blue used on coats of arms, then more generally for the clear blue of a cloudless sky. The same lapis lazuli ancestor survives in the related colour name 'lazuli' and lies behind the spelling oddity that the word begins with a vowel rather than the l it once carried.
How the word is built
- azure (from Persian/Arabic lazaward, the deep blue stone lapis lazuli, with the initial l- lost as if it were an article)
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