Coloured

How to spell coloured

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce coloured

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does coloured mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a particular colour or colours rather than being plain, black, or white.
2. verbPast tense of colour: applied colour to something, or influenced how something is perceived.

Coloured in a sentence

• adjective

  She wore a brightly coloured scarf to the interview.

• verb

  The children coloured the entire poster with felt-tip markers.

• adjective

  The report used coloured charts to show each region's sales.

• verb

  His early experience strongly coloured his view of the company.

Where does coloured come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin noun color, which meant a hue, tint, or surface appearance, and which may originally have related to the idea of covering or concealing a surface. It travelled into English through Old French, where it appeared as colour and color, and was adopted in the 1200s and 1300s alongside many other Norman administrative and descriptive terms. The British and Canadian spelling keeps the French-influenced -our ending, which is precisely the spelling trap, since the closely related American form drops the u to give 'colored'. The base word then takes the ordinary -ed ending to form both the past tense of the verb and an adjective meaning 'given colour'. The same Latin color sits inside relatives such as 'colourful', 'discolour', and the more learned 'coloration', which helps explain why the u can quietly slip away in writing.

How the word is built

• colour (from Latin color: hue, tint)
• -ed (past tense / adjectival suffix)

British and American spelling

Coloured is the British spelling. American English spells it colored.