beige

Meanings

Noun

• A slightly yellowish gray colour, as that of unbleached wool.
• Debeige; a kind of woollen or mixed dress goods.

Adjective

• Having a slightly yellowish gray colour, as that of unbleached wool.
• Comfortably dull and unadventurous, in a way that suggests middle-class suburbia.

Origin

• Borrowed from French (dialectal) beige, from Old French bege ("color of undyed wool or cotton"), from an Alpine language (compare Franco-Provençal bézho, Romansch besch), from Vulgar Latin *bysseus ("cottony grey") (compare French bis, Catalan bis, Italian bigio), from Late Latin byssus 'cotton', from Ancient Greek βύσσος 'cotton homespun', from Semitic (compare Hebrew/Aramaic בוץ). bice.