dye
pronunciation
How to pronounce dye in British English:
UK [daɪ]
How to pronounce dye in American English:
US [daɪ]
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- Noun:
- a usually soluble substance for staining or coloring e.g. fabrics or hair
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- Verb:
- color with dye
Word Origin
- dye
- dye: [OE] Dye is something of a mystery word. Its original meaning seems to have been simply ‘colour’, its modern connotations of ‘artificially changing colour’ a secondary development, but its source remains unknown. A connection has been suggested with Old English dēagol ‘secret, hidden’, but what the implications of that would be for its semantic history are not clear. The convention of spelling the word dye did not become established until as recently as the 19th century; until then die was equally common, and orthographic confusion with die ‘cease to live’ was rife.
- dye (n.)
- Old English deah, deag "a color, hue, tinge," perhaps related to deagol "secret, hidden, dark, obscure," from Proto-Germanic *daugilaz (cognates: Old Saxon dogol "secret," Old High German tougal "dark, hidden, secret").
- dye (v.)
- Old English deagian "to dye," from the source of dye (n.). Spelling distinction between dye and die was not firm till 19c. "Johnson in his Dictionary, spelled them both die, while Addison, his near contemporary, spelled both dye" [Barnhart]. Related: dyed. For dyed in the wool (or grain) see wool (n.).
Antonym
Example
- 1. Unlike a dye , a pigment generally is insoluble .
- 2. The tubes are filled with oil blended with a propietary dye .
- 3. You can use that water to dye fibers .
- 4. But he said he really liked it and reassured me I could dye it back whenever I wanted .
- 5. By age 20 he was already running a plant producing ammonium chloride and prussian blue dye .