Pigment
noun, verb ·Very common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 Any color in plant or animal cells.
"Chlorophyll is the pigment responsible for most plants' green colouring."
- 2 a substance used as a coating to protect or decorate a surface (especially a mixture of pigment suspended in a liquid); dries to form a hard coating wordnet
- 3 A dry colorant, usually an insoluble powder.
"Umber is a pigment made from clay containing iron and manganese oxide."
- 4 dry coloring material (especially a powder to be mixed with a liquid to produce paint, etc.) wordnet
- 5 Wine flavoured with spices and honey. obsolete
"Oswald, broach the oldest wine-cask; place the best mead, the richest morat, the most sparkling cyder, the most odoriferous pigment, upon the board; […]"
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- 6 any substance whose presence in plant or animal tissues produces a characteristic color wordnet
- 1 To add color or pigment to something. transitive
- 2 color or dye with a pigment wordnet
- 3 acquire pigment; become colored or imbued wordnet
Example
More examples"It is said that Lycopene, a pigment found in tomatoes, makes your skin beautiful and helps you lose weight."
Etymology
From Middle English pigment, from Latin pigmentum (“pigment”), itself from pingō (“I paint”) + -mentum; variants of this word may have been known in Old English (e.g. 12th century pyhmentum). Doublet of pimiento, pimento, and piment.
Related phrases
More for "pigment"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.