scarlet

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Of a bright, vivid red colour.

   She wore a scarlet dress to the party.

2. 2
   noun

   A bright red colour, sometimes with a hint of orange.

   The autumn leaves had turned to scarlet.

3. 3
   adj

   Red in the face from embarrassment or shame.

   He went scarlet when everyone laughed at his mistake.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Scarlet first denoted an expensive kind of cloth and only became chiefly a colour term by the 14th century, when bright, durable red was strongly associated with costly fabric. The word is a shortening of Old French escarlate, from medieval Latin scarlata, transmitted through Arabic and medieval Greek from late Latin sigillatus, “decorated with small images,” itself from sigillum, “small image.” This history suggests that the earliest cloth was embroidered or damasked.

From Middle English scarlet, scarlat, borrowed from Old French escarlate (“a type of cloth”), from Medieval Latin scarlātum (“scarlet cloth”), of uncertain origin. This was long thought to derive from Classical Persian سقرلات (saqirlāt, “a warm woollen cloth”), but the Persian word (first attested in the 1290s) is now thought to be from Arabic سِقِلَّات (siqillāt), denoting very expensive, luxury silks dyed scarlet-red using the exceptionally expensive dye, first attested around the ninth century. The most obvious route for the Arabic word siqillāt to have entered the Romance languages would b…

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary