coloring

1. 1.

   a digestible substance used to give color to food

   “food color made from vegetable dyes”

   Synonymscolouringfood coloringfood colouringfood colorfood colour

   Broaderfoodstuff
2. 2.

   a visual attribute of things that results from the light they emit or transmit or reflect

   “a white color is made up of many different wavelengths of light”

   Synonymscolorcolourcolouring

   Broadervisual property

   Narrowerprimary colorheather mixturemottleshadechromatic colorachromatic colorcolorationcomplexionnonsolid color
3. 3.

   the act or process of changing the color of something

   Synonymscolouring

   Broaderchange of color

   Narrowertintinghair coloringdyeing

Other forms of coloring

plural

colorings·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about coloring

What does coloring mean?

coloring means "a digestible substance used to give color to food". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in coloring?

coloring has 3 syllables: col-o-ring. The stress falls on "col". In IPA it is /ˈkʌlɚɪŋ/.

What is another word for coloring?

Close synonyms include colouring, food coloring, food colouring, food color, food colour. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is coloring a common word?

coloring is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.