Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A deep red to dark grayish purple.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Purple-brown; reddish-brown; of a flea-color.
- noun A purple-brown or reddish-brown color.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of a dark brown or brownish purple color.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
brownish -purple color . According to the American Heritage Dictionary, deep red to dark grayish purple. - adjective Of a
brownish -purple color . According to the American Heritage Dictionary, deep red to dark grayish purple.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a color varying from dark purplish brown to dark red
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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We should all be grateful for our honest friends; the ones who tell us hard truths, like that we have something stuck in our teeth and that puce is not a color anyone should wear.
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We should all be grateful for our honest friends; the ones who tell us hard truths, like that we have something stuck in our teeth and that puce is not a color anyone should wear.
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He was arrayed in puce and gold, rings slipped on to his fingers, his legs coaxed into hose with marvellous clocks splashed on their sides, and a diamond buckle placed above the large black bow of his tie-wig.
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It seems that SNCF ticket machines, autoroute toll collection machines, etc. need a "puce" - what's a Yank to do?
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It seems that SNCF ticket machines, autoroute toll collection machines, etc. need a "puce" - what's a Yank to do?
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He does not understand the soul-agony of a man who makes his first appearance in puce.
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With Chirac playing the drama queen, decribed by the media as "puce", and a Schröder, "white with rage" puffing himself up with artificial fury, not least because Blair is cosying up to Merkel, all it needed was for Juncker to come up with his now infamous phrase: "Europe is not in a state of crisis… it is in a state of profound crisis," and the copy-writers had all they needed.
Not time for the obituaries Richard 2005
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The puce-faced obstructionist, breathing fire and fury at anyone who dares ask about Rooney?
Sir Alex Ferguson's press conference on Wayne Rooney | 19 October Sean Ingle 2010
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Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin A detail of the "cigar box" at Drynachan Lodge, the drawing room with tartan carpet and puce velvet club chairs.
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Like how sometimes your friend has a new sweater in a particularly awful shade of puce that makes him/her look quite bilious, and when your friend asks, "How do I look in my pleasing new sweater?" you respond, if you are a well-bred person, "What a striking color that is!"
A Word 2009
slumry commented on the word puce
I had no idea that this referred to the color of a flea. "And where does the flea get its red-brown color?" she mused.
Ick.
June 30, 2007
bilby commented on the word puce
I find it tricky to imagine this colour but the name of the colour is very unappealing.
December 22, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word puce
"Why couldn't it have been puce?
Lavender over chartreuse?
Or possibly some exotic shade--
A delicate orange, mauve, or jade--
Instead of the choice that has been made?
Why couldn't it have been
Possibly cinnamon?!"
--George Washington to Betsy Ross, as depicted in Stan Freberg's "The United States of America, Volume I."
"Everybody wants to be an art director,
Everybody wants to call the shots.
Everybody wants to be a flag dissector,
Changing all my stars to polka-dots.
Everybody thinks that they're the final word on
What is strictly 'out' and what is 'in'!
How'd you like a flag that features fleur-de-lys on
Ochre corrugated tin?!"
--Betsy Ross to George Washington, as depicted in Stan Freberg's "The United States of America, Volume I."
December 22, 2007
seanahan commented on the word puce
That's great chained_bear, do you recommend buying the whole thing? Stan Freberg's "The United States of America" box set on Amazon
December 25, 2007
reesetee commented on the word puce
Ah, Stan Freberg. Man's a genius. Like you, c_b, I have that whole thing memorized. :-)
December 29, 2007
drosselmeier commented on the word puce
It was named by Louis XVI.
August 5, 2008
sarra commented on the word puce
See mauve for a description of a similarly bastard colour. I cannot make this word conjure up the colour it really ought, no matter how hard I try.
Puce is a horrible word; this is the colour it (inaccurately!) recalls to me.
I am eagle-eyed and sharp-tongued on any other colour names, including those on the green/blue border which everyone loves to argue about. I got a perfect score on the hue test. Why these two anomalies?! I must have been misinformed by my mother at a very tender age…
November 29, 2008
bilby commented on the word puce
Uggh, puce makes me think of unpleasant surprises in public toilets. Your colour association with puce may be erroneous but it's on the kind side, sarra.
November 29, 2008