ultramarine

Meanings

Adjective

• Beyond the sea.
• Of a brilliant dark blue or slightly purplish colour like that of the pigment (noun sense 1).

Noun

• In full ultramarine blue: a brilliant blue pigment that was traditionally made from ground-up lapis lazuli, and now usually either extracted from mineral deposits or made synthetically.
• A brilliant dark blue or slightly purplish colour like that of the pigment.

Origin

• . The English word is analysable as ultra- + marine.
• Noun sense 1 (“pigment”) refers to the fact that lapis lazuli was obtained from foreign countries and hence “beyond the sea”.