Definitions

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

  • noun A light grayish brown or yellowish brown to grayish yellow.
  • noun A soft fabric of undyed, unbleached wool.
  • adjective Light grayish-brown or yellowish-brown to grayish-yellow.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A thin, wiry dress-fabric of worsted, originally unbleached, but now made in all colors and many designs.
  • Having its natural color: said of a woolen fabric made of undyed wool.

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

  • noun Debeige.

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

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

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

  • adjective of a light greyish-brown color
  • noun a very light brown

Etymologies

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

[French, fine woolen fabric left in its natural color, from Old French bege, perhaps from shortening of Old Italian bambagia, cotton wool, ultimately from Medieval Latin bombax, cotton; see bombazine.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Borrowing from French dialectal beige, from Old French bege 'color of undyed wool or coton', from an Alpine language (compare Franco-Provençal bézho, Romansch besch) 'dull grey', from Vulgar Latin *bysseus 'cottony grey' (compare French bis, Catalan bis, Italian bìgio), from Late Latin byssus 'cotton', from Ancient Greek  (býssos) 'cotton homespun', from Semitic (compare Hebrew/Aramaic būṣ)

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Examples

Comments

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  • Beige is so beige.

    September 3, 2008

  • Beautiful word.

    March 3, 2009

  • means 'fine threads' sounds like modern slang

    August 30, 2009