color (English)

Where does "color" come from?

English color came into Middle English as colour, borrowed through Anglo-Norman and Old French from Latin color. The Latin word goes back to an earlier form, colōs, from Proto-Italic *kelōs and ultimately Proto-Indo-European *ḱel-, meaning “to hide” or “conceal,” though the English word itself came to mean visible hue and appearance. In English it largely displaced older native words like blee and partly hīew, while the shorter spelling color was later popularized in American English by Noah Webster to align it with the Latin form.

Full etymology tree

• color (English), 'The spectral composition of visible light.'
  • inherited from colour (Middle English), 'colour, hue, shade'
    • borrowed from colur (Anglo-Norman)
      • inherited from colour (Old French), 'alternative form of color'
        • inherited from color (Latin), 'color (US), colour (UK); shade, hue, tint'
          • derived from colōs (Latin), 'alternative form of color'
            • inherited from *kelōs (Proto-Italic)
              • derived from *ḱel- (Proto-Indo-European), 'to cover'

Direct ancestors

• colour (Middle English)
• colour (Old French)
• color (Latin)
• couleur (English)

Updated April 2026

Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris