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:
Maybe most famously, the purple and sequined version with a gold “FF” logo slung over Carrie Bradshaw’s shoulder in the “Sex and the City” episode when she’s robbed at gunpoint.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026
With that, the whole of Baltimore revealed years of pent-up anxiety about Lamar Jackson, walking to a window, opening it, and screaming into the purple void.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
“He’s a guy who knows how to win a purple district,” Germana had told me, and he’s calibrated his public persona and strategy around that.
From Slate ● Oct. 29, 2026
Ali, speaking through an interpreter, appeared in court wearing a purple coat and a black head scarf.
From BBC ● Oct. 23, 2026
She tapped her purple gel pen on the surface and waited for him to speak.
From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova
Adam Rigg’s cemetery set—trees, graves, a crypt—is enhanced by the purples and greens of lighting co-designers Yi Zhao and Stacey Derosier.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026
And ‘Pose’ is very blue with some purples in there.
From Salon ● Jun. 9, 2026
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
But don’t tell that to the intrepid folks who found places to see the pinks and purples in Southern California.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2024
There were beautiful pinks and blues and reds and browns and purples.
From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
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
And the old gentleman winked at James and Jamie, and became still purpler with laughter that was struggling to be heard.
From Pirate Gold by Frederic Jesup Stimson
Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, 'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, 20 Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.
From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell by James Russell Lowell
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
It achieved its purplest popularity between 1895 and 1900, was fading fast by 1914.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
"Well, he's the purplest plum I ever saw," said Dawn.
From Some Everyday Folk and Dawn by Miles Franklin
The golden walls of this palace which I have built look down, enamoured of their reflection, into a lake of the choicest, purplest wine.
From The Purple Cloud by M. P. (Matthew Phipps) Shiel
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
His leg is purpled with vivid rashes and lesions.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 29, 2019
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
And he hated himself because even as she lay dying he saw how wide and ghastly her purpled lips drew back from her teeth.
From "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck
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
Peering into the mirror, he hardly recognized himself, a 24-year-old man on crutches, stitches between his eyebrows, a gash above his ear, another on his forehead and a bruise purpling his cheek.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2015
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
It wasn't that he "doubted the truth" of the memo, he told a purpling Senator McClellan.
From Time Magazine Archive
Then she stood, panting, staring at her wrecked hands until the sun set and the stars winked slyly in the purpling sky.
From "Bone Gap" by Laura Ruby
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