Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having a chestnut, bay, or sorrel coat thickly sprinkled with white or gray.
  • noun The characteristic coloring of a roan horse.
  • noun A roan horse or other animal.
  • noun A soft flexible sheepskin leather, often treated to resemble morocco and used in bookbinding.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A clump of whins.
  • noun Same as rowan.
  • Of a bay, sorrel, or chestnut color, with gray or white hairs more or less thickly interspersed: said chiefly of horses. A bright-red mixture is called strawberry-roan or red-roan.
  • noun An animal, especially a horse, of a roan color.
  • noun A roan color; the color of a roan horse.
  • noun A soft and flexible sheepskin, largely used by bookbinders, and often made in imitation of morocco.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having a bay, chestnut, brown, or black color, with gray or white thickly interspersed; -- said of a horse.
  • adjective Made of the leather called roan.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a very large South African antelope (Hippotragus equinus). It has long sharp horns and a stiff bright brown mane. Called also mahnya, equine antelope, and bastard gemsbok.
  • noun The color of a roan horse; a roan color.
  • noun A roan horse.
  • noun A kind of leather used for slippers, bookbinding, etc., made from sheepskin, tanned with sumac and colored to imitate ungrained morocco.
  • noun (Bot.) See Rowan tree.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective especially of a horse, having a coat of a dark base color with individual white hairs mixed in
  • noun An animal such as a horse that has a coat of a dark base color with individual white hairs mixed in.
  • noun The color of such an animal.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective (used of especially horses) having a brownish coat thickly sprinkled with white or grey
  • noun a horse having a brownish coat thickly sprinkled with white or gray
  • noun a soft sheepskin leather that is colored and finished to resemble morocco; used in bookbinding

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Old French roan, rouan, from Old Spanish roán, rodano, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *rāvidānus (from Latin rāvidus, gray, yellowish-gray, from rāvus, gray, yellowish-gray, of unknown origin) and or of Germanic origin (akin to Old English rēad, red; see reudh- in Indo-European roots).]

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