DISCOLOUR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does discolour mean? 

• DISCOLOUR (verb)
  The verb DISCOLOUR has 1 sense:

1. change color, often in an undesired manner

  Familiarity information: DISCOLOUR used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DISCOLOUR (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they discolour    ... he / she / it discolours   
Past simple: discoloured   
Past participle: discoloured   
-ing form: discolouring   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Change color, often in an undesired manner

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

color; colour; discolor; discolour

Context example:

The shirts discolored

Hypernyms (to "discolour" is one way to...):

change (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "discolour"):

blush; crimson; flush; redden (turn red, as if in embarrassment or shame)

blanch; blench; pale (turn pale, as if in fear)

bronze; tan (get a tan, from wind or sun)

burn; sunburn (get a sunburn by overexposure to the sun)

white; whiten (turn white)

black; blacken; melanise; melanize (make or become black)

turn (change color)

silver (turn silver)

dye (color with dye)

redden (turn red or redder)

purple (become purple)

gray; grey (turn grey)

yellow (turn yellow)

tone (change the color or tone of)

green (turn or become green)

blue (turn blue)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Derivation:

discolouration (the act of changing the natural color of something by making it duller or dingier or unnatural or faded)

discolouration (a soiled or discolored appearance)

 Context examples 

During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He rummaged in his coat pocket, and, drawing out a piece of discoloured, blue-tinted paper, he laid it out upon the table.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The outside was rough and worn, the leaves discoloured.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

With a slow smile he drew a folded and discoloured scrap of paper from his pocket.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The tears were running down his puffed and discoloured cheeks, and his face was drawn with pain. A savage expression flitted across it.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The other is a man’s, sun-burned, discoloured, and also pierced for an earring.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In half a minute he had reached the port scuppers and picked, out of a coil of rope, a long knife, or rather a short dirk, discoloured to the hilt with blood.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It was two storeys high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Neither is reason among them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by passion and interest.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Its panelled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago, in my mind, but of the present instant.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)