Rouge

How to spell rouge

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rouge

What does rouge mean?

1. nounA red or pink cosmetic used to add colour to the cheeks.
2. nounA fine red powder, usually iron oxide, used to polish metal and glass.

Rouge in a sentence

• She brushed a little rouge across her cheeks before the interview.

• The jeweller used rouge on a soft wheel to bring the silver to a mirror finish.

• The vintage compact still held a worn cake of rouge.

• A smear of rouge on the buffing cloth removed the last scratches from the lens.

Where does rouge come from?

Language of origin: French

This is a direct borrowing of the French word rouge, which simply means 'red'. The French form descends from the Latin rubeus, meaning 'reddish' or 'red', a relative of ruber 'red' that also gave English words such as 'ruby' and 'rubric'. English took the word in during the 1700s specifically for the red powder or cream that people applied to their cheeks and lips, so the borrowed colour name narrowed into a cosmetic name. Because it kept its French clothing, the spelling preserves the soft 'zh' sound spelled with a g, the silent finishing e, and the French 'ou' for the 'oo' vowel, which is exactly why writers reaching for an English-looking 'rooge' or 'roug' go wrong. The same Latin root for redness still shows through whenever you notice the shared colour idea in ruby, rubella, and ruddy.

How the word is built

• rouge (from French rouge: red), an unaltered borrowing with no internal prefix or suffix