colouring

Pluralcolourings

1. 1
   painting processnouncountable or uncountable

   The work or process of adding colour to something.

   Before colour film, the hand colouring of photographs was skilled and slow work.

   The careful colouring of each figure is what makes the pottery so expensive.

   UsageFor children's pictures people often say colouring in: a colouring book, a quiet afternoon of colouring.

   Similartinting, painting

2. 2
   shades it hasnouncountable or uncountable

   The colours something has, such as the shade of a person's skin, hair and eyes or the markings of an animal.

   She inherited her mother's colouring: dark hair, olive skin and grey eyes.

   The moth's mottled colouring makes it almost invisible against the bark.

   UsageOften with fair or dark (fair colouring); for the skin of the face alone, the usual word is complexion.

   Similarpigmentation, complexion, markings

3. 3
   dyenouncountable or uncountable

   A substance added to something, especially food or drink, to give it colour.

   The sweets are made without artificial colourings or preservatives.

   A little blue colouring turned the cake mixture the shade of a summer sky.

   UsageFor the substance, say some or a few drops of food colouring; colourings means kinds of it, as on labels.

   Similardye, colourant

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of colour: the verb's -ing form in any of its meanings, as in "she was colouring in the map" or "fear is colouring his judgement".

   The leaves are already colouring on the beech trees along the lane.

   Anger was clearly colouring his judgement of the new manager.

   UsageWith no object it can mean changing colour: the leaves are colouring; her face was colouring (going red). It can also describe adding colour to pictures: the children are colouring.

5. 5
   adjective

   Providing or adding colour, literally or in a figurative sense.

   Note

   The colour this adjective adds can be of feeling as much as of paint: Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Romance and Reality (1831) speaks of a colouring enthusiasm which creates more than half of what it enjoys. It is easy to confuse with the gerund in a colouring book or colouring pencils, where the word names the activity the thing is for. Source

   Checked 4 Nov 2026 · 2 facts

   • Letitia Elizabeth Landon wrote Romance and Reality, first published in 1831. en.wikipedia.org
   • The novel contains the wording 'colouring enthusiasm which creates more than half of what it enjoys'. en.wiktionary.org

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