different between yellow vs wallflower

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

wall +? flower

Alternative forms

• wall-flower
• wall flower

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?w??l.?fl??.?/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?w?l.?fl??.?/, /?w?l.?fl??.?/

Noun

wallflower (plural wallflowers)

1. Any of several short-lived herbs or shrubs of the Erysimum genus with bright yellow to red flowers.
2. Gastrolobium grandiflorum, a poisonous bushy shrub, endemic to Australia.
3. A person who does not dance at a party, due to shyness or unpopularity; by extension, anyone who is left on the sidelines while an activity takes place.
   • 1878, Fannie Bean, Dr. Mortimer's Patient: A Novel, page 23:

     Mrs. Galbraith shook all over with laughter as she replied, “Hear that boy, asking me to dance ! I'm content to be a wallflower, now-a-days."

   • 1885, The Freemason's Repository, page 133:

     And now, by virtue of his office, he is entitled to a seat in the Grand Lodge. Is it any wonder he is a wall-flower there  […]

   • 1897, Mrs. C. E. Humphry, Manners for Women, page 53:

     It is a triumph, of course, to have plenty of partners, and not to be a wallflower for a single dance.

   • 1913, Plasterer, page 8:

     Jack Breen was a wallflower; still at the same time I noticed he was cultivating an ornamental smile — a Jack of Trumps, you bet.

   • 1921, Collier's, page 3:

     She was a wallflower in a sleepy little town itself a wallflower. She was a joke to the village wits and a byword to the village belles.

   • 2017, Sam Wasson, Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Art, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (?ISBN), page 94:

     Second City was a wallflower at the show business ball. It needed to be. Improvisers needed to fail, and fail safely; and in the Midwest, far from Broadway and Hollywood, they really could. Second-class stature was the secret ingredient, ...

4. (informal) Any person who is socially awkward, shy, or reserved.
   • 2019, Liz Tyner, To Win a Wallflower, Harlequin (?ISBN)

     I've always been a wallflower, even in my own home. But, I'm willing to learn to be a part of your world. I would like to. I have already told my parents that I want to go to soirées.

Translations

Verb

wallflower (third-person singular simple present wallflowers, present participle wallflowering, simple past and past participle wallflowered)

1. (intransitive) To stand shyly apart from a dance, waiting to be asked to join in.
   • 2010, Alexandra Carter, Janet O'Shea, The Routledge Dance Studies Reader (page 237)

     […] the idea that a full tango experience is impossible without the presence of wallflowers and without the threat of wallflowering as the potential dancers enter the tango club.

Further reading

• Erysimum on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• wallflower on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• “wallflower”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.