purple
Americannoun
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purples
plural
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any color having components of both red and blue, such as lavender, especially one deep in tone.
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cloth or clothing of this hue, especially as formerly worn distinctively by persons of imperial, royal, or other high rank.
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the rank or office of a cardinal.
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the office of a bishop.
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imperial, regal, or princely rank or position.
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deep red; crimson.
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any of several nymphalid butterflies, as Basilarchia astyanax red-spotted purple, having blackish wings spotted with red, or Basilarchia arthemis banded purple, or white admiral, having brown wings banded with white.
adjective
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purpler,
comparative
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purplest
superlative
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of the color purple.
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imperial, regal, or princely.
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brilliant or showy.
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full of exaggerated literary devices and effects; marked by excessively ornate rhetoric.
a purple passage in a novel.
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profane or shocking, as language.
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relating to or noting political or ideological diversity.
purple politics; ideologically purple areas of the country.
verb (used with or without object)
idioms
noun
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any of various colours with a hue lying between red and blue and often highly saturated; a nonspectral colour
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a dye or pigment producing such a colour
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cloth of this colour, often used to symbolize royalty or nobility
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high rank; nobility
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the official robe of a cardinal
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the rank, office, or authority of a cardinal as signified by this
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bishops collectively
adjective
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of the colour purple
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(of writing) excessively elaborate or full of imagery
purple prose
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noble or royal
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of purple
First recorded before 1000; Middle English purpel (noun and adjective), Old English purple (adjective), variant of purpure, from Latin purpura “kind of shellfish yielding purple dye, the dye, cloth so dyed,” from Greek porphýra; cf. purpure, porphyry
Explanation
Purple is a shade that's a mixture of red and blue. If you are eating a grape Popsicle, get ready to spend a while with a purple tongue and lips. The Greek root of purple is porphyra, which was the name of the shellfish from which purple dye was made. Long ago, only royalty could wear — and afford the dye for — purple clothing. If the setting sun purples the sky, the light is making the horizon appear to be colored purple, just as a bruise purples your skin. Purple prose is a literary term that refers to overly flowery or exaggerated writing.
Vocabulary lists containing purple
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:
“Think of them as a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,” the National Society of Professional Surveyors, a group not normally known for purple prose, warns on its website.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026
Like Muse and Dots, Pickle agents appear customizable and cute: A promotional video showed off a purple creature with big, wide eyes named Gummy.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 3, 2026
She has infused her suits and dresses with yellow, red, purple, or floral prints, keeping them structured yet light.
From Barron's ● Sep. 26, 2026
Catherine wore a purple, floor-length Jenny Packham dress.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
But right now, EG was quiet, and Kiki was smiling in her neon pink, orange, and purple knee socks.
From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith
A palette of soft pinks, purples and blues lend warmth and dimension to Rana’s starkly beautiful home.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026
“Mike took it and made it incredibly subtle: flesh with the violets and the purples and the pearlescence,” Del Toro says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2025
Anthocyanins, found in berries, red cabbage and purple carrots, provide the deep reds, purples and blues we associate with these foods.
From Salon ● Jan. 20, 2025
Dancers wear pants and tops, adorned with fringe, in glowing purples and reds that bleed right into Christopher S. Chambers’s moody lighting.
From New York Times ● May 15, 2024
The sky was a robin’s-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays.
From "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman
The more psalm-like accompaniments outweigh the purpler prose.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 21, 2021
He is swishing and spitting a Châteaneuf-du-Pape purpler than August berries.
From Slate ● May 5, 2012
Named for a mythical sunken city, Ys was a prouder, purpler record than Newsom's debut.
From Slate ● Mar. 1, 2010
Darden grew something purpler in the face, and, rumbling oaths, went over to the three beneath the oak.
From Audrey by Mary Johnston
The empurpled Alloway grew purpler at the sight of a coolness he did not share.
From The Admirable Tinker Child of the World by Edgar Jepson
We’re inviting readers to write their own over-the-top ode to the weather: Give us a paragraph about the recent heat wave, in your purplest prose.
From New York Times ● Jul. 26, 2013
Last fortnight Critic Olin Downes paid Moriz Rosenthal homage in a nostalgic vein with the purplest passage in the modern, if not the entire, history of the New York Times.
From Time Magazine Archive
It achieved its purplest popularity between 1895 and 1900, was fading fast by 1914.
From Time Magazine Archive
These receptacles were filled and hidden with the largest, purplest, and most fragrant violets Marise had ever seen, and their amethyst tones, massed against the dark, rose-brown wood, produced an exquisite effect.
From Vision House by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson
It was musty, cobwebbed, and encrusted with stalactic nitre, but the spirit of rare old vintages exhaled from its depths, and visionary clusters of purplest grapes dangled in every direction.
From The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862 Devoted To Literature And National Policy by Various
But he came and he was full purpled out.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 1, 2023
Last summer at my local nursery, I was greeted by a single bushy flower: the blooms velvety, thick, purpled and plush.
From New York Times ● Mar. 25, 2022
On Sunday morning, a middle-aged female civil servant walked out of the Sule polling station and flashed her purpled little finger.
From Time ● Nov. 8, 2015
Tumblr, meanwhile, is awash in pretty pictures of purpled nebulas and vintage anatomy diagrams.
From Newsweek ● Feb. 11, 2015
The captain lay bloated, his face puffed and purpled, the sun baking and ruining his flesh.
From "Ship Breaker" by Paolo Bacigalupi
In that race, Cox narrowly defeated three-term Rep. David Valadao, a Hanford Republican, and flipped the Central Valley’s purpling 22nd Congressional District from GOP control.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 17, 2024
Although her name has been bandied about as a potential Democratic gubernatorial candidate in purpling Georgia, Willis said she’s dreaming of a future away from politics.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2023
In the film, they are wearing virginal white nightgowns and there is a gruesome close-up of their toenails, long and crusted on bloated purpling toes.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 15, 2010
He would stride back & forth across his room, purpling the air with oratory, punctuated by invocations of God and the flag, pounding his fist in his palm, swinging his arms in great sweeping gestures.
From Time Magazine Archive
He held back even then until the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache whirled upon him savagely with a purpling face, and then he offered the explanation that made him immortal.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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.
