rouge

¹ American  

[roozh] / ruʒ /

noun

• rouges
  plural

1. any of various red cosmetics for coloring the cheeks or lips.

2. a reddish powder, chiefly ferric oxide, used for polishing metal, glass, etc.

3. Canadian football.

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verb (used with object)

• rouges,
  present (3rd person singular)
• rouged,
  past participle,  past
• rouging
  present participle

1. to color with rouge.

verb (used without object)

• rouges,
  present (3rd person singular)
• rouged,
  past participle,  past
• rouging
  present participle

1. to use rouge.

rouge ² American  

[roozh] / ruʒ /

adjective

French.

1. red; noting the red numbers in roulette.

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rouge British  

/ ruːʒ /

noun

1. a red powder, used as a cosmetic for adding redness to the cheeks

2. short for jeweller's rouge

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verb

1. to apply rouge to

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• unrouged
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• rouges
  plural

Participles

• rouging
  present
• rouged
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• rouge
  simple
• rouges
  simple
• have rouged
  perfect
• has rouged
  perfect
• am rouging
  progressive
• are rouging
  progressive
• is rouging
  progressive
• have been rouging
  perfect progressive
• has been rouging
  perfect progressive

Past

• rouged
  simple
• had rouged
  perfect
• was rouging
  progressive
• were rouging
  progressive
• had been rouging
  perfect progressive

Future

• will rouge
  simple
• will have rouged
  perfect
• will be rouging
  progressive
• will have been rouging
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of rouge

1475–85; < French: red < Latin rubeus; akin to red ¹

Explanation

When your grandma says she's "putting her face on" in the morning, what she means is that she's swiping lipstick on her mouth and dabbing plenty of rouge on her cheeks. Rouge is any kind of red or reddish-colored makeup that's used for tinting a person's cheeks. The word rouge can also refer to the red color itself, or it can be a verb, which you'd use to say, "Grandma, you're uneven — you forgot to rouge your left cheek." The root of rouge is the Latin word rubeus, which itself means "red". A common mistake is to confuse the words rouge and rogue, which means a scoundrel.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

rouge rouges rouged rouging

I scooped up a pét-nat rouge, a rosé and a red blend on my way out of town at Yakima’s Apple Valley Emporium, a combination skateboard and bottle shop.

From Seattle Times ● May 18, 2024

Instead of wearing lipstick or rouge, I darken my eyebrows.

From New York Times ● Apr. 24, 2024

Joel Embiid will wear red, white and blue in Paris next summer - not rouge, blanc and bleu.

From Washington Times ● Oct. 5, 2023

Maples blaze rouge whilst bigtooth aspens and mountain-ash trees sprinkle yellow.

From Salon ● Jun. 18, 2023

Her coconut-shell face had been heavily made up with blue eye shadow, rouge, and red lipstick.

From "Beauty Queens" by Libba Bray

They gather flowers and spread them at the door; Butterfly rouges her cheeks and puts on the wedding garments she wore the night she and the lieutenant fell in love.

From New York Times ● Apr. 28, 2024

In something of an operatic mad scene, he visits a barber who dyes his hair, powders him with ghost-white makeup and rouges his cheeks.

From New York Times ● Oct. 13, 2021

France witnessed the emergence of "les bonnets rouges" - a protest movement with its roots in Brittany, with its symbol of red hats taken from an earlier tax revolt.

From BBC ● Dec. 27, 2013

The man who married Trotsky's secretary made his most interesting and rebellious characters girls: the piratical sisters, the Amazons, who "rattle our sabres to frighten the neighbours", ululate ferociously beneath their bonnets rouges.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 19, 2010

"Do you s'pose Cora Stanton will be marked off in personal appearance 'cause she rouges and uses a lipstick?" asked Gyp, with a sly glance toward Isobel, who turned fiery red.

From Highacres by Harriet Roosevelt Richards

Her ensemble is accented with abundant gold jewelry and a variety of red splashes in wrist- and hair-bows, brightly rouged cheeks and a feathered headdress.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2024

The airbrushing was so over-the-top, the eyes so blue, the lips so rouged, that he looked like a porcelain doll.

From New York Times ● Oct. 28, 2022

With her teeth extravagantly capped, her cheeks lavishly rouged and her eyes ringed with bruiselike shadows, Davis’s Ma Rainey is a terrifying, transfixing figure: domineering, mercurial and deeply wounded.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 1, 2020

I remember him telling my brothers and me, after his father died, that he hadn’t been able to look into the open casket, because the morticians had rouged his father’s cheeks.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 17, 2017

She had full, rouged lips and wide- spaced eyes, heavily made up.

From "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck

Baroness Steinheil's first request was for a mirror, in front of which she immediately set about powdering & rouging.

From Time Magazine Archive

Some plates require a great deal of rouging; it then generally means that you must look to your sensitizer.

From Photogravure by Henry R. Blaney

Then she became suddenly serious, for she had come to the operation of rouging.

From Four Short Stories By Emile Zola by Émile Zola

Ah! and then about the handwriting of hers that I had to imitate, and the dying my hair, and rouging, to make the transformation complete?

From Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

Lady rouging herself: she holds a mirror and rouge-pot.—

From The Treasury of Ancient Egypt Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology by Arthur E. P. B. Weigall