different between yellow vs eat

English

Alternative forms

• yeallow (obsolete), yeller (dialect)

Etymology

From Middle English yelwe, yelou, from Old English ?eolwe, oblique form of of Old English ?eolu, from Proto-West Germanic *gelu, from Proto-Germanic *gelwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *??elh?wos, from *??elh?- (“gleam, yellow”)

Compare Welsh gwelw (“pale”), Latin helvus (“dull yellow”)), Irish geal (“white, bright”), Lithuanian žalias (“green”), Ancient Greek ?????? (khl?rós, “light green”), Persian ???? (zard, “yellow”), Sanskrit ??? (hari, “greenish-yellow”)). Cognate with German gelb (“yellow”), Dutch geel (“yellow”).

The verb is from Old English ?eolwian, from the adjective.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?j?l.??/
• (General American) enPR: y?l??, IPA^(key): /?j?l.o?/
• (dialect) IPA^(key): /?j?l.?/
• (dated, Southern US folk speech) IPA^(key): /j?l?/, /?jæl?/, /?j?l?/, /?j?l?/, /?j?l?/
• Rhymes: -?l??

Adjective

yellow (comparative yellower or more yellow, superlative yellowest or most yellow)

1. Having yellow as its color.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667) - Book X, line 434

     A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought / First fruits, the green ear and the yellow sheaf.

   • 1911, J. Milton Hayes, "The green eye of the little yellow god,"

     There's a one-eyed yellow idol / To the north of Kathmandu; / There's a little marble cross below the town; / And a brokenhearted woman / Tends the grave of 'Mad' Carew, / While the yellow god for ever gazes down.

   • 1962 (quoting c. 1398 text), Hans Kurath & Sherman M. Kuhn, editors, Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-01044-8, page 1242:

     dorr??, d?r? adj. & n. […] Golden or reddish-yellow […] (a. 1398) *Trev. Barth. 59b/a: ?elou? colour [of urine] […] tokeneþ febleness of hete […] dorrey & citrine & li?t red tokeneþ mene.

   Antonyms: nonyellow, unyellow

2. (informal) Lacking courage.
   • 1951, J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 13:

     What you should be is not yellow at all. If you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it.

   • 1975, Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

     You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you!

   Synonym: cowardly

3. (publishing, journalism) Characterized by sensationalism, lurid content, and doubtful accuracy.
   • 2004, Doreen Carvajal, "Photo edict muffles gossipy press," International Herald Tribune, 4 Oct. (retrieved 29 July 2008),

     The denizens of the gossipy world of the pink press, purple prose and yellow tabloids are shivering over disputed photographs of Princess Caroline of Monaco.

4. (chiefly derogatory, offensive, racist) Of the skin, having the colour traditionally attributed to Far East Asians, especially Chinese.
5. (chiefly derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) Far East Asian (relating to Asian people).
   • 1913, Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

     Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.
6. (dated, Australia, offensive) Of mixed Aboriginal and Caucasian ancestry.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, Chapter VI, p. 64, [2]

     "Eh, Oscar—you hear about your yeller nephew?".

7. (dated, US) Synonym of high yellow
   • 1933 September 9, James Thurber, “My Life and Hard Times—VI. A Sequence of Servants”, in The New Yorker

     Charley threw her over for a yellow gal named Nancy: he never forgave Vashti for the vanishing from his life of a menace that had come to mean more to him than Vashti herself.

8. (Britain, politics) Related to the Liberal Democrats.
   • 2012 March 2, Andrew Grice, "Yellow rebels take on Clegg over NHS 'betrayal'", The Independent

9. (politics) Related to the Free Democratic Party of Germany.

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

yellow (plural yellows)

1. The colour of gold, butter, or a lemon; the colour obtained by mixing green and red light, or by subtracting blue from white light.
2. (US) The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, the illumination of which indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection if it is safe to do so.
3. (snooker) One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of 2 points.
4. (pocket billiards) One of two groups of object balls, or a ball from that group, as used in the principally British version of pool that makes use of unnumbered balls (the (yellow(s) and red(s)); contrast stripes and solids in the originally American version with numbered balls).
5. (sports) A yellow card.
6. Any of various pierid butterflies of the subfamily Coliadinae, especially the yellow coloured species. Compare sulphur.

Synonyms

• (intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights): amber (British)

Antonyms

• (intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights): red, green

Hyponyms

• (color): bronze yellow, cadmium yellow, fast yellow AB, quinoline yellow, school bus yellow, sulfur yellow, sulphur yellow, taxi yellow, yellow-green, yellow 2G

Derived terms

• beyellowed
• see yellow

Translations

Verb

yellow (third-person singular simple present yellows, present participle yellowing, simple past and past participle yellowed)

1. (intransitive) To become yellow or more yellow.
   • 1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York Review Books 2006, page 47:

     Then suddenly, with the least warning, the sky yellows and the Chergui blows in from the Sahara, stinging the eyes and choking with its sandy, sticky breath.

   • 2013, Robert Miraldi, Seymour Hersh, Potomac Books, Inc. (?ISBN), page 187:

     Interviews, clippings, yellowing stories from foreign newspapers, notebooks with old scribblings. Salisbury called it the debris of a reporter always too much on the run to sort out the paper, but there it was, an investigator's dream, […]

2. (transitive) To make (something) yellow or more yellow.

Translations

See also

• All pages with yellow as a prefix

References

Anagrams

• Yowell

English

Etymology

From Middle English eten, from Old English etan (“to eat”), from Proto-West Germanic *etan, from Proto-Germanic *etan? (“to eat”), from Proto-Indo-European *h?édti, from *h?ed- (“to eat”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /i?t/
• (US) IPA^(key): /it/
• Rhymes: -i?t

Verb

eat (third-person singular simple present eats, present participle eating, simple past ate or (dialectal) et or (obsolete) eat, past participle eaten or (dialectal) etten)

1. To ingest; to be ingested.
   1. (transitive, intransitive) To consume (something solid or semi-solid, usually food) by putting it into the mouth and swallowing it.
      • At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear—man, woman, or cat—in the chambers and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs.
   3. (intransitive) To consume a meal.
      • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

        I eat in the kitchen.

   4. (intransitive, ergative) To be eaten.
      • 1852, The New Monthly Magazine (page 310)

        I don't know any quarter in England where you get such undeniable mutton—mutton that eats like mutton, instead of the nasty watery, stringy, turnipy stuff, neither mutton nor lamb, that other countries are inundated with.

      • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

        […] dish him [the fish] with slices of oranges, barberries, grapes, gooseberries, and butter; and you will find that he eats deliriously either with farced pain or gammon pain.

   5. (copulative, intransitive) To have a particular quality of diet; to be well-fed or underfed (typically as "eat healthy" or "eat good").
2. To use up.
   1. (transitive) To destroy, consume, or use up.
      • 1857-1859, William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians

        His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages.

   2. (transitive, informal, of a device) To damage, destroy, or fail to eject a removable part or an inserted object.
      • 1991, Shane Black, The Last Boy Scout (movie)

        No! There's a problem with the cassette player. Don't press fast forward or it eats the tape!

   3. (transitive, informal, of a vending machine or similar device) To consume money (or other instruments of value, such as a token) deposited or inserted by a user, while failing to either provide the intended product or service, or return the payment.
      • 1977, Nancy Dowd, Slap Shot (movie)

        Hey! This stupid [soda vending] machine ate my quarter.

3. (transitive, informal) To cause (someone) to worry.

4. (transitive, business) To take the loss in a transaction.
   • 1988, George Gallo, Midnight Run (movie)

     I have to have him in court tomorrow, if he doesn't show up, I forfeit the bond and I have to eat the $300,000.
5. (transitive, slang) To be injured or killed by (something such as a firearm or its projectile), especially in the mouth.
   • 1944, William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman, The Big Sleep (screenplay)

     I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and Eddie Mars' gang. I dodge bullets and eat saps.

   • 1997, A. A. Gill, "Diary" (in The Spectator, 1 November 1997):

     Friends are only necessary in the ghastly country, where you have to have them, along with rubber boots and a barometer and secateurs, to put off bucolic idiocy, a wet brain, or eating the 12-bore.

   • 2012, Kaya McLaren, How I Came to Sparkle Again: A Novel, St. Martin's Press (?ISBN):

     Mike had been to other calls where someone had eaten a gun. He knew to expect teeth embedded in the ceiling and brains dripping off it.

   • 2017, Edward W. Robertson, Stardust, Edward W. Robertson:

     The animal was sweating and scared and MacAdams was surprised when they finished up without either of them eating a kick.

   • 2018, Daniel Tomazic, Of Bullies and Men: Young Adult Fiction (?ISBN), page 18:

     There was a resounding smacking noise and Georgy was sure Philip had just eaten a fist.

6. (transitive, intransitive) To corrode or erode.

7. (transitive, slang) To perform oral sex (on a person or body part).

Conjugation

Synonyms

• (consume): consume, swallow; see also Thesaurus:eat
• (cause to worry): bother, disturb, worry
• (eat a meal): dine, breakfast, chow down, feed one's face, have one's breakfast/lunch/dinner/supper/tea, lunch

Derived terms

Related terms

• fret
• ort

Translations

See also

• drink
• edible
• food

Noun

eat (plural eats)

1. (colloquial) Something to be eaten; a meal; a food item.
   • 2011, William Chitty, ?Nigel Barker, ?Michael Valos, Integrated Marketing Communications (page 167)

     Eating a Picnic creates a flurry of wafer pieces, flying peanuts and chocolate crumbs. […] As well as being messy, Picnic happens to be a big eat – something of a consumption challenge in fact.

Anagrams

• -ate, AET, Até, Atë, ETA, TEA, Tea, a.e.t., aet, ate, eta, tea, æt.

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /?e.at/, [?eät?]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /?e.at/, [????t?]

Verb

eat

1. third-person singular present active subjunctive of e?

Northern Sami

Pronunciation

• (Kautokeino) IPA^(key): /?ea?h(t)/

Verb

eat

1. first-person plural present of ii

West Frisian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???t/

Pronoun

eat

1. something, anything

   Antonym: neat

Further reading

• “eat”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011