polychrome
Americanadjective
-
being of many or various colors.
-
decorated or executed in many colors, as a statue, vase, or mural.
verb (used with object)
noun
adjective
-
having various or changing colours; polychromatic
-
made with or decorated in various colours
noun
Etymology
Origin of polychrome
1795–1805; earlier polychrom < German < Greek polýchrōmos many-colored. See poly-, -chrome
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On the kitchen walls, the “Lauenstein Yellow” tile cascades down into polychrome patterns.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
The mug was described in the auction catalogue as "a tin glazed commemorative mug with polychrome decoration depicting a bust length portrait of King Charles II, crowned and wearing armour and titled 'CD2 and 1660'".
From BBC ● Jan. 13, 2023
But complete confidence is unavailable to polychrome experts who extrapolate data from only a few surviving examples of painted artifacts.
From New York Times ● Aug. 17, 2022
A gallery devoted to religion and ritual pairs an 18th-century polychrome statue of St. Benedict of Palermo with a 1962 abstraction by Rubem Valentim that suggests the cosmology of Afro-Brazilian religious symbolism.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2022
The debris, rolling and flowing down the sides of the volcanic mountains, arching in great jets over the polychrome landscape, is more than enough to cover the impact craters.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
The Y, from 1930, by Dwight James Baum, who designed the building to look like an Italian hill town, with battlements and balconies and polychromed sculptures of evangelists.
From New York Times ● Sep. 16, 2020
“I consider his polychromed Popeye a current masterpiece,” Taschen said, “and could imagine sharing a room with it.”
From New York Times ● Apr. 21, 2015
USA Today is the cross-pollination of print journalism and television, aimed at a generation conditioned to a diet of polychromed, encapsulated news.
From Time Magazine Archive
"Basilica of Glory," austere on the outside but stuffed with plaster piety inside: battalions of pink and blue angels, scores of polychromed saints, gauze curtains and blue and beige carpets.
From Time Magazine Archive
We are all dwellers in a vast picture-gallery, with frescoed dome above and polychromed sculpture and mosaic pavement on the floor below.
From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 099, March, 1876 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
