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purple
[ pur-puhl ]
noun
- any color having components of both red and blue, such as lavender, especially one deep in tone.
- cloth or clothing of this hue, especially as formerly worn distinctively by persons of imperial, royal, or other high rank.
- the rank or office of a cardinal.
- the office of a bishop.
- imperial, regal, or princely rank or position.
- deep red; crimson.
- any of several nymphalid butterflies, as Basilarchia astyanax red-spotted purple, having blackish wings spotted with red, or Basilarchia arthemis banded purple, or white admiral, having brown wings banded with white.
adjective
- of the color purple.
- imperial, regal, or princely.
- brilliant or showy.
- full of exaggerated literary devices and effects; marked by excessively ornate rhetoric:
a purple passage in a novel.
- profane or shocking, as language.
- relating to or noting political or ideological diversity:
purple politics; ideologically purple areas of the country.
verb (used with or without object)
- to make or become purple.
purple
/ ˈpɜːpəl /
noun
- any of various colours with a hue lying between red and blue and often highly saturated; a nonspectral colour
- a dye or pigment producing such a colour
- cloth of this colour, often used to symbolize royalty or nobility
- the purplehigh rank; nobility
- the official robe of a cardinal
- the rank, office, or authority of a cardinal as signified by this
- the purplebishops collectively
adjective
- of the colour purple
- (of writing) excessively elaborate or full of imagery
purple prose
- noble or royal
Derived Forms
- ˈpurpleness, noun
- ˈpurplish, adjective
- ˈpurply, adjective
Other Words From
- purple·ness noun
Word History and Origins
Word History and Origins
Origin of purple1
Idioms and Phrases
- born in / to the purple, of royal or exalted birth:
Those born to the purple are destined to live in the public eye.
Example Sentences
However, the observations in purple exceeded four inches and launched into our boom scenario.
Schools that opened while they were in the red tier can actually open in the purple tier.
Schools that had not offered on-campus schooling for at least one entire grade level at least part of the week during the red tier cannot expand reopenings while in the purple tier – which San Diego County is in now.
On the ceiling of a small chamber in another Sulawesi cave, the researchers found a large pig painting — like the others, executed in red or dark red and purple mineral pigments — that dates to between 32,000 and 73,400 years ago.
Spearheaded by Stacey Abrams and her organization Fair Fight, together with many activist and grassroots organizations, Georgia turned a brilliant deep shade of blue, very close to purple, but blue nonetheless.
Black and purple bunting went up over the doorway at the 84th Precinct stationhouse where Ramos and Liu had been assigned.
She says that every film she makes, she has to hit someone—The Color Purple, The Butler, and Selma.
Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah will never come anywhere close to being purple.
Here and there, sparingly, one of the dolls might be purple or green: “Rainbow Piets,” they call them.
Worse, when Richman woke up the next morning, her entire ear was purple.
A small book, bound in full purple calf, lay half hidden in a nest of fine tissue paper on the dressing-table.
Its pages are filled with the purple gowns of kings and the scarlet trappings of the warrior.
She was in a soiled dressing gown of purple flannel, with several of the buttons off.
Wright's stain gives the nucleus a deep purple color and the cytoplasm a pale robin's-egg blue in typical cells.
Malarial parasites stain characteristically: the cytoplasm, sky-blue; the chromatin, reddish-purple.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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