英和和英

語源

colour +‎ -less

発音

• (英国発音) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlə(ɹ).ləs/

形容詞

colourless (comparative more colourless, superlative most colourless) (英国用法 spelling)

1. Having little or no colour.
   • 1867, Ivan Sergheïevitch Turgenef [i.e., Ivan Turgenev], chapter I, in Eugene Schuyler, transl., Fathers and Sons […], New York, N.Y.: Leypoldt and Holt, →OCLC, page 1:

     The servant to whom he put this question was a young fellow with chubby cheeks, small, dull eyes, and a round chin, covered with a colorless down.

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 14:

     Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless.

   • 1947 January and February, O. S. Nock, “"The Aberdonian" in Wartime”, in Railway Magazine, page 7:

     The wide prospect up stream was grey and lowering, the long still-distant waterfront of Dundee, and the Fife shore were alike colourless, and there was ample evidence of rough weather not far ahead.

2. (of a liquid) Water white.
3. Lacking in interest or variety.
4. (politics) Neutral in opinion or allegiance; centrist
   • 1926, David Joseph Saposs, Left Wing Unionism: A Study of Radical Policies and Tactics, page 73:

     They cannot, of course, assume a colourless position because they cater to the radical rank and file and would be branded renegades.

同意語

• (having little または no colour): see also Thesaurus:achromatic
• (of a liquid): clear, waterlike; see also Thesaurus:transparent
• (lacking in interest): drab, dull; see also Thesaurus:boring

派生語

参考

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously on Wikipedia.