Definitions

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

  • adjective Turning yellow; yellowish.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Yellowish; having a yellow tinge; turning yellow.

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

  • adjective Turning yellow; yellowish.

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

  • adjective yellow-ish in colour, or turning yellow

Etymologies

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

[Latin flāvēscēns, flāvēscent-, present participle of flāvēscere, to turn yellow, inchoative of flāvēre, to be yellow, from flāvus, yellow; see bhel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin flavescens

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Examples

  • A wonderful impetus was supplied by the creature itself when, flavescent bristles standing noticeably on end, it took a menacing four-tentacled step toward him.

    Lost And Found Foster, Alan Dean 2004

  • Tracking downward from Riddick's face and spe-cial goggles, the attention of the flavescent trio even'tually came to rest on the big man's boots.

    The Chronicles of Riddick Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2004

  • Instead, fields of waving wheatlike grass stretched to the distant horizon, interrupted only by isolated thickets of slender, buttery-yellow trees that rose from the flavescent savanna like stiff whiskers on a cat's face.

    Kingdoms of Light Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2001

  • Within minutes the miniature oasis was no more, a flavescent smudge of decay against the sickly, pallid earth.

    A Triumph of Souls Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2000

  • Everything spread out again: the bridges with their arches opening upon the sheeny water; the Cite, enveloped in shade, above which rose the flavescent towers of Notre-Dame; the great curve of the right bank flooded with sunlight, and ending in the indistinct silhouette of the

    His Masterpiece ��mile Zola 1871

  • "Peering through the tentacled brilliance, she saw the yellow figure of Rachael surrounded by an attentive court of dazzling luminaries, a flavescent nucleus orbited by blue and crimson electrons.

    Cachalot Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 1980

Comments

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  • "I raised my eyes to those flavescent, frizzy locks and felt myself caught in their swirl and swept away, with a throbbing heart, amid the lightning and the blasts of a hurricane of beauty."

    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 185 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    January 8, 2010