crayon

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small stick or pencil of colored wax, chalk, charcoal, or similar material used for drawing

   The child used a blue crayon to draw the sea.

2. 2
   noun

   a drawing made with crayons, or the artistic medium used to make such a drawing

   The gallery displayed a delicate crayon by a nineteenth-century portraitist.

3. 3
   verb

   to draw, write, or color with crayons

   She crayoned a bright border around the invitation.

Borrowed in the seventeenth century from French crayon, 'pencil,' formed from craie, 'chalk,' plus the noun suffix -on. Craie descends from Latin creta, 'chalk or clay.' English broadened the word from chalk-based drawing tools to sticks of wax, charcoal, and other colored materials.

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