Meanings
- alternativenot comparableAlternative spelling of of color.
Cæsar Pinkerton is a very respectable “gemman of colour;” […] [H]e aspired to have a wife. […] [H]e therefore paid a series of delicate attentions to Miss Feliciana Dusenberry, a sooty specimen of the fair sex.
1835 April 14, “Police Scenes”, in York Gazette, volume XV, number 47, York, Pa.: [Adam] King & [Adam John] Glossbrenner, →OCLC, page [2], column 22 more examples
Silver […] leaves his wife to manage the inn; and as she is a woman of colour, a pair of old bachelors like you and I may be excused for guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the health, that sends him back to roving. […] Of Silver we have heard no more. That formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life; but I dare say he met his old Negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint.
1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLCPeople of colour were pushed forward at every moment, just as extras are hired to fill empty seats at the Oscars if stars drift away. It would have been little surprise if this show had cut to the valet parking line outside, with 83% of the valets of colour.
2016 March 3, David Thomson, The Guardian
Cite this entry
of colour. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/of%20colour
“of colour.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/of%20colour. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “of colour,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/of%20colour.
Source: of colour on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.