Colouring

How to spell colouring

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce colouring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does colouring mean?

1. nounThe act or activity of applying colour to something, such as filling in a drawing.
2. nounA substance, especially in food, added to give or change colour.
3. nounThe natural colour or tones of a person's skin, hair, or an object.

Colouring in a sentence

• The children spent the rainy afternoon colouring in their activity books.

• The label confirmed the drink contained no artificial colouring.

• Her pale colouring made the doctor suspect she was short of iron.

• Colouring the diagram by hand made the report easier to follow.

• A few drops of red food colouring turned the icing bright pink.

• The bird's vivid colouring helped the watchers identify it at once.

Where does colouring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin color, meaning a hue or tint, which passed into Old French as colour before being adopted into Middle English in the 1300s. The British spelling preserves that French-influenced 'ou', a pattern English inherited along with words like favour and honour, and that 'u' is exactly the letter American spelling later dropped to give 'coloring'. The suffix '-ing' was added to turn the verb 'to colour' into a noun describing either the act of applying colour or the colour something naturally has. Over time the word broadened from the literal mixing of pigments to cover a person's complexion, an added dye in food, and the leisure activity of filling in pictures. The persistent spelling trap is simply remembering that British and Canadian usage keeps the 'u' before the '-ing', so it is colour plus ing, never 'coloring'.

How the word is built

• colour (from Latin color: hue, tint)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)

British and American spelling

Colouring is the British spelling. American English spells it coloring.