# amber

Pronunciation: US say "AM-bur" /ˈæm.bɚ/; UK/AUS say "AM-buh" /ˈam.bə/

## Adjective

1. Brownish yellow, like the usual color of amber.
   - Simple: Having a warm brownish-yellow color, like honey.
   - _His amber eyes caught the firelight._
   - _The fields glowed amber in the late afternoon sun._

## Noun

2. A hard fossil resin from ancient trees, mostly conifers but also some flowering trees, usually yellow to brown and translucent, used in jewelry and decoration and once dissolved as a binder in varnishes.
   - Simple: A hard, clear yellow-brown material formed from very old tree sap, often used to make jewelry.
   - _The museum displayed a beetle perfectly preserved in amber from forty million years ago._
   - _Baltic amber has been traded across Europe since prehistoric times._
3. A warm color in the yellow-orange range.
   - Simple: A warm color between yellow and orange.
   - _The whiskey shone a rich amber in the glass._
   - _The fall leaves deepened from gold to amber._
4. The middle signal in a set of three traffic lights, which when lit tells drivers to stop if it is safe to do so. *(Australia, British)*
   - Simple: The middle light in a set of traffic lights, telling drivers to stop when it is safe to do so.
   - _He braked as the amber showed, knowing red would follow._
   - _At that junction the amber seems to last only a second._
5. A state of hesitation or only limited approval to move forward, by analogy with a yellow traffic signal.
   - Simple: Partial permission to move ahead, given with caution rather than a full go-ahead.
   - _The committee signaled amber on the merger, urging caution before any commitment._
   - _An amber from the regulators meant the launch could proceed only on strict conditions._
6. The stop codon UAG, which signals the end of protein synthesis; also a mutant carrying that codon at a premature point in its sequence.
   - Simple: A signal in genetic code, written UAG, that tells a cell to stop building a protein.
   - _A premature amber truncated the polypeptide halfway through translation._
   - _Researchers introduced an amber to test how the ribosome handled the stop signal._

## Noun

7. Obsolete: ambergris, the waxy substance from sperm whales (once thought to come from a plant), prized as a perfume fixative. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: In old use, ambergris, a waxy substance from whales used in perfume.

## Verb

8. To preserve an object or organism by sealing it within hardened fossil resin. *(rare)*
   - Simple: To trap and keep something inside hardened tree resin.
9. Rare: to take on, or give something, the warm yellow color of amber. *(rare)*
   - Simple: To become, or make something become, a warm golden-yellow color.
   - _The grasslands amber as fall sets in._
   - _Her old photographs have ambered over the decades._
10. To give food, drink, or perfume the scent or taste of ambergris. *(rare)*
   - Simple: To add the scent or taste of ambergris to something.

## Origin

It comes from Middle English ambre, from Old French ambre, from Arabic ʕanbar ("ambergris"), which itself derives from Middle Persian ambar ("ambergris").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/amber (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).