amber

Meanings

Noun

• Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.
• A hard, generally yellow to brown translucent fossil resin, used for jewellery. One variety, blue amber, appears blue rather than yellow under direct sunlight.
• A yellow-orange colour.
• The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, which when illuminated indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection if it is safe to do so.
• The stop codon (nucleotide triplet) "UAG", or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.
• Hesitance to proceed, or limited approval to proceed; an amber light.

Adjective

• Of a brownish yellow colour, like that of most amber.

Verb

• To perfume or flavour with ambergris.
• To preserve in amber.
• To cause to take on the yellow colour of amber.
• To take on the yellow colour of amber.

Related

Similar words

• yellow
• ambergris

Opposite words

• red, green

Origin

• From Middle English ambre, aumbre, from Old French aumbre, ambre, from Arabic عَنْبَر, from Middle Persian 𐭠𐭭𐭡𐭫. Compare English lamber, ambergris. Displaced Middle English smulting (from Old English smelting), Old English eolhsand, Old English glær, and Old English sāp.
• The nucleotide sequence "UAG" is named "amber" for the first person to isolate the amber mutation, California Institute of Technology graduate student Harris Bernstein, whose last name ("Bernstein") is the German word for the resin "amber".