Tint
nounA shade or variety of a colour, especially a pale or delicate one.
How to spell tint
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce tint
What does tint mean?
- nounA shade or variety of a colour, especially a pale or delicate one.
- verbTo apply a slight or delicate colour to something.
Tint in a sentence
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noun
The walls were painted in a soft green tint.
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verb
The salon can tint your hair a subtle shade of auburn.
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noun
A faint pink tint appeared in the morning sky.
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verb
A few drops of dye will tint the whole batch of water.
Where does tint come from?
Language of origin: Latin
This word traces back to the Latin verb tingere, which literally meant 'to wet, moisten, or dye', and its past participle tinctus, meaning 'dyed' or 'coloured'. English first used an earlier form spelled 'tinct' in the 1600s, taken straight from that Latin participle, to mean a colour or dye. By around 1700 the spelling had shifted to 'tint', partly under the influence of the Italian word tinta, which carried the same sense of a shade or hue. The very same Latin root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'tincture', 'tinge', and 'taint', all of which share the idea of one substance colouring or affecting another. Because the word is short and follows its sound exactly, the only real spelling care is remembering the single 't' at each end rather than doubling anything.
How the word is built
- tint (from Latin tinctus, dyed/coloured), no affixes in modern form
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