Camouflage

How to spell camouflage

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce camouflage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does camouflage mean?

1. nounColoured patterns, materials, or natural features used to disguise something by helping it blend into its surroundings.

Camouflage in a sentence

• The lizard's camouflage is amazing.

• Soldiers wear camouflage in the field.

Where does camouflage come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the French verb camoufler, meaning 'to disguise' or 'to make up for the stage', a term from Parisian slang that itself may trace back to the Italian camuffare, 'to disguise or muffle up'. The noun camouflage entered English during the First World War, around 1917, when armies began painting equipment and draping netting to hide it from aerial observation and the new threat of reconnaissance aircraft. Before that surge of military use the idea was largely theatrical, the art of altering an appearance so the eye is fooled. The unusual spelling preserves its French shape intact: the silent-looking 'ou', the 'fl' cluster, and the soft '-age' ending that sounds like 'ahzh' rather than the English '-idge'. That foreign skeleton is exactly the trap, since the word is spelled nothing like it is pronounced.

How the word is built

• camoufl- (from French camoufler: to disguise)
• -age (noun suffix)