Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To tinge with a sallow or yellowish color.
  • Having a yellowish color; of a brownish-yellow and unhealthy-looking color: said of the skin or complexion.
  • noun An English collectors' name for certain noctuid moths; a sallow-moth. Thus, Cirrœdia xerampelina is the center-barred sallow.
  • noun A willow, especially Salix caprea, the great sallow or goat- or hedge-willow.
  • noun An osier; a willow wand.

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

  • adjective Having a yellowish color; of a pale, sickly color, tinged with yellow.
  • transitive verb Poetic To tinge with sallowness.
  • noun Poetic The willow; willow twigs.
  • noun (Bot.) A name given to certain species of willow, especially those which do not have flexible shoots, as Salix caprea, S. cinerea, etc.
  • noun (Bot.) a European thorny shrub (Hippophae rhamnoides) much like an Elæagnus. The yellow berries are sometimes used for making jelly, and the plant affords a yellow dye.

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

  • adjective Having a grayish, yellow-green hue.
  • adjective Dirty; murky.
  • noun A European willow, Salix caprea, that has broad leaves, large catkins and tough wood.

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

  • adjective unhealthy looking
  • noun any of several Old World shrubby broad-leaved willows having large catkins; some are important sources for tanbark and charcoal
  • verb cause to become sallow

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English salowe, from Old English salu, from Proto-Germanic *salwaz (compare Dutch zaluw, dialectal German sal), from Proto-Indo-European *solH- (compare Welsh halog, Latin salīva, Russian соловый (solóvyj, "cream-colored")).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English salwe, from Old English sealh, from Proto-Germanic *salhaz, masculine variant of *salhō, *salhjōn (compare Low German Sal, Saal; Swedish sälg), from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂lk-, *sh₂lik- (compare Welsh helyg, Latin salix), probably originally a borrowing from some other language.

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Examples

  • Abner! "and he called his sallow-faced companion, who was already arguing salvation and temperance with some of the crew.

    Hawaii Michener, James 1959

  • He quotes also a poem that calls the sallow ‘the strength of bees’, and the hawthorn, ‘the barking of hounds’, and the gooseberry bush, ‘the sweetest of trees’, and the yew, ‘the oldest of trees’.

    Later Articles and Reviews W.B. Yeats 2000

  • As I turned the handle I wondered idly what kind of sallow Turk or bulging-necked German we should find inside.

    Greenmantle 2005

  • "You've been lookin 'kind of sallow these last days, so I've got a spoonful of molasses and sulphur, laid right by yo' plate."

    The Miller of Old Church 1911

  • "You've been lookin 'kind of sallow these last days, so I've got a spoonful of molasses and sulphur laid right by yo' plate."

    The Miller Of Old Church Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow 1909

  • As I turned the handle I wondered idly what kind of sallow Turk or bulging-necked German we should find inside.

    Greenmantle John Buchan 1907

  • She was wearing a bluish print dress that brought out a kind of sallow warmth in her skin, and although it was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, her sleeves were tucked up, as if for some domestic work, above the elbows, showing her rather slender but very shapely yellowish arms.

    The History of Mr. Polly 1906

  • He was a tall handsome young man, slightly built, with the kind of sallow complexion that women admire, and I wondered at his preferring my company to that of the womankind on board, who were certainly very civil to him.

    The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers Mary Cholmondeley 1892

  • "The bark of what we call asp-wood, ma'am, which is a kind of sallow; they lay up great quantities of it in the autumn as a provision for winter, when they are frozen up for some months."

    The Settlers in Canada Frederick Marryat 1820

  • "The bark of what we call asp-wood, ma'am, which is a kind of sallow; they lay up great quantities of it in the autumn as a provision for winter, when they are frozen up for some months."

    The Settlers in Canada Frederick Marryat 1820

Comments

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  • I hadn't known a sallow was a willow until reading a book by David Crystal in which he talks about a "leah overgrown with sallows."

    December 20, 2008

  • an English 'willow' or a Dutch 'brownish yelllow'

    February 8, 2013