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.

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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