coloured
US spellingcolored
Pluralcoloureds
- 1Having a colour of some kind, rather than being colourless.
Coloured glass in the chapel windows throws patches of red and blue across the floor.
Highlighting the key dates in coloured ink made the revision timetable much easier to read.
UsageDon't confuse it with colourful: coloured pencils simply have colour, while a colourful scarf is bright, with many colours.
Similartinted
Oppositecolourless, uncoloured
- 2Of a particular colour or shade, often named just before the word, as in cream-coloured or rust-coloured.
The dress was coloured like the evening sky, deep blue fading into pink.
The village is built almost entirely of honey-coloured stone.
UsageUsually joined by a hyphen to a colour or a thing: honey-coloured stone, cream-coloured paint.
- 3Past tense and past participle of colour.
His years in the army have coloured his views on discipline.
The onions had coloured nicely after ten minutes in the pan.
UsageWith no object it can mean blushed (she coloured at the remark) or, in cooking, browned (the onions had coloured).
- 4Influenced throughout in a particular direction, often in ways that are hard to notice, and so not impartial.
Her account of the divorce was a rather coloured version of events.
Much of what we think we know about medieval kings is coloured by chroniclers who served their rivals.
UsageOften coloured by something (coloured by jealousy), or before view, account or version: a rather coloured account. Softer than biased.
- 5In Southern Africa, belonging to a community whose ancestry combines more than one of the region's racial groups (black, white and Asian); under apartheid, an official category.
The Coloured community of the Western Cape has its own long tradition of music and carnival.
In 1956 coloured voters in the Cape were removed from the common voters' roll.
UsageKeep it to the Southern African community: outside that setting say mixed-race, since coloured said of a person is widely heard as offensive.
Note
In South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe this is the ordinary name of a community, often capitalised as Coloured, and under apartheid it was also an official racial category. Most of the community speaks Afrikaans.
Less common meanings
- 6In laundry, an item of clothing that has colour, rather than a white one.
Sort the coloureds from the whites before you load the machine.
I do the darks first and then put the coloureds on at forty degrees.
UsageUsually plural, paired with whites: wash the coloureds separately, so that dye does not run into the white things.
Oppositewhite
- 7In Southern Africa, a person whose ancestry combines more than one of the region's racial groups: black, white and Asian.
Under the Group Areas Act, a Coloured could not legally buy a house in a suburb reserved for whites.
A community of Coloureds has lived in this Cape Town suburb for generations.
UsageUsually written Coloured, often plural (the Coloureds of the Cape). Outside Southern Africa, calling someone a coloured is heard as offensive.
- 8A dated and usually offensive word used to describe people whose skin is not white, especially Black people.
To find a job is like a haystack needle / Because where he lives they don't use colored people
1973, Stevie Wonder, “Living for the City”UsageTo describe people, use Black, or name the particular group.
Note
Once ordinary in American writing, even in regiment names such as the Fourteenth Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (colored), the word is now dated and usually offensive when said of Black people or of anyone who is not white. In Southern Africa the word has a separate, current meaning.
- 9Historically, set aside under segregation for people who were not white in the United States, or for people of mixed race in South Africa.
In the segregated South, Black travellers were sent to the coloured waiting room at the back of the station.
New Orleans is a very dull town. It’s against the law to go to the colored section. The bars are insufferably dreary.
1957, Jack Kerouac, On the RoadNote
A word of segregation, found in phrases such as a coloured drinking fountain, a coloured hospital or the coloured section of a town, in the United States and in South Africa alike. In Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Old Bull Lee complains that it is against the law to go to the coloured section of New Orleans. Today this use belongs to accounts of that history; the Southern African community meaning is separate and still current.
- 10A dated and offensive term for a person who is not white.
Showing meanings only.
coloured is a form of colour
colour, verb: To make something a particular colour or add colour to it, for instance by dyeing, painting or tinting. Full entry
- Spelling
- colour → coloured: add -ed
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /d/.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from colour + -ed.
Checked 4 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Coloured is formed from colour + -ed. en.wiktionary.org