Crayon

How to spell crayon

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce crayon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does crayon mean?

1. nounA stick of coloured wax or chalk used for drawing and colouring.

Crayon in a sentence

• The toddler pressed a red crayon hard against the paper.

• She sketched the rough layout in blue crayon before painting.

Where does crayon come from?

Language of origin: French

The word came into English in the early seventeenth century directly from French, where crayon meant 'pencil' or 'chalk pencil'. The French noun was a diminutive built on craie, meaning 'chalk', so crayon literally described a 'little piece of chalk' used for drawing. That craie in turn descends from the Latin creta, meaning 'chalk' or 'clay', the same earthy material that also gave its name to the island of Crete in older folk associations. At first English used crayon for any stick of coloured chalk or pastel that artists drew with, and only later did it settle on the familiar wax stick that modern children and designers use. The spelling keeps its French shape intact, which is why the 'ay' vowel and the final 'on' look a little unexpected to writers who would otherwise spell the sound more plainly.

How the word is built

• cray- (from French craie: chalk)
• -on (diminutive suffix)