yellows

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of yellow.

   The designer chose three warm yellows for the fall collection.

   Goldenrod and lemon are two very different yellows.

   Note

   The count plural, used when yellow names something you can number: distinct shades on a paint chart, or yellow cards shown over a season. In the British style of pool played with unnumbered balls, the two groups of object balls are simply the yellows and the reds, where American pool speaks of stripes and solids. The same spelling also serves as the present-tense verb, as in paper that yellows with age.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of yellow.

   Newsprint yellows within a few years of printing.

   The varnish yellows as it ages, dulling the colors beneath it.

   Note

   The verb works in both directions. Used intransitively, something yellows on its own, as paper, varnish and newsprint do over time, often with age. Used transitively, something else does the coloring and takes an object: smoke yellows a ceiling. When you need the transitive use, make sure an object follows the verb.

   Years of cigarette smoke yellows the ceiling of the old bar.

   Strong sunlight yellows the pages of any book left on the sill.

3. 3
   nounarchaic

   A plant disease, seen especially in peach trees, that causes the leaves to turn yellowish.

   By midsummer the yellows had spread through the entire row of fruit trees.

   An old farmer warned that the yellows could ruin a whole orchard within a season.

   Note

   The orchard counterpart to the livestock jaundice, built the same way, from the color the sick tree shows in its leaves. Peach trees are the classic sufferers, and the trouble also went by the name little peach. Like its animal namesake, it takes the article (the yellows spread through the orchard) and now reads as period language rather than current plant-disease vocabulary.

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