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:
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
The median response for purple calls was seven minutes and 31 seconds - within target.
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026
You know him for countless roles — the self-important playwright Barton Fink or the purple jumpsuit-rocking bowler whom nobody messes with in “The Big Lebowski.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026
Mist floated in the hollows between the mounds, where the pale, ghostly skeletons of hemlock reared above his head, and the purple stalks of dying willowherb released their eerily drifting down.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
One of the world’s most famous Porsches is a race car painted in a psychedelic swirl of purples and greens.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2026
And ‘Pose’ is very blue with some purples in there.
From Salon ● Jun. 9, 2026
"And one of the most spectacular displays of autumn colour is the American ash where the leaves will turn a golden yellow before changing into purples and deep red," he added.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 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
Montague thought that the Major's face grew redder every day, and the purple veins in it purpler; or was it that the old gentleman's shirt bosom gleamed more brightly in the glare of the lights?
From The Metropolis by Upton Sinclair
Old Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more—that is, if it is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal—and his nose seemed to get purpler and purpler.
From Pomona's Travels A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former Handmaiden by Frank Richard Stockton
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
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
Full many a cow of purplest ray serene Is haply grazing where I may not see; Full many a donkey writes of her, I ween, But neither of these creatures would I be.
From The Book of Humorous Verse by Carolyn Wells
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
Clouds gathered, the sky purpled, and a breeze rose from the northwest.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
The greening, or purpling, of Los Angeles also involves these elements, but mostly water.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2022
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
Case, arms waving and face purpling, kept shouting.
From Time Magazine Archive
By the time I found a small spring-fed pool nestled among some birch trees, I could see the sky purpling into dusk behind the trees.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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