Turquoise

How to spell turquoise

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce turquoise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does turquoise mean?

1. nounA blue-green semiprecious mineral used in jewellery.
2. adjectiveOf a blue-green colour resembling the gemstone.

Turquoise in a sentence

• noun

  The silver ring was set with a polished oval of turquoise.

• adjective

  She painted the bathroom walls a soft turquoise shade.

• noun

  She collects southwestern jewellery made from silver and turquoise.

• adjective

  The resort brochure showed turquoise water lapping at white sand.

Where does turquoise come from?

Language of origin: French

Turquoise comes from the Old French phrase 'pierre turquoise', literally meaning 'Turkish stone', because the blue-green mineral reached medieval Europe along trade routes that ran through Turkey, even though the gems themselves were mined further east in Persia. The French adjective 'turquois' (feminine 'turquoise') simply meant 'Turkish', so the stone was named for the place it was thought to come from rather than for any quality of its own. English borrowed the word in the 1300s and at first wrote it in many ways, including 'turkeis' and 'turkis', before the French-looking spelling with its silent middle settled in. By the late 1500s the same word was being used for the distinctive blue-green colour of the stone. The trap in the spelling is entirely French: the 'quoi' cluster carries a 'kw' or 'k' sound and the final 'se' is sounded as a 'z', neither of which the English spelling makes obvious.

How the word is built

• turqu- (from French Turquois: Turkish)
• -oise (French feminine adjective ending)