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In Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel A Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian’s unscrupulous friend Lord Henry Wotton impresses upon the young Dorian what the process of aging will do, saying "Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed." Literature of the 19th century abounds with sallow people—Charles Dickens applied the word to characters in no fewer than 12 novels—but the word had been in use with the same meaning for centuries before that literary heyday. Its synonymous Old English forbear is salu, which shares an ancestor with an Old High German word meaning "murky" as well as with a Russian word meaning "yellowish gray."
Examples of sallow in a Sentence
Marah Eakin, Vulture, 14 May 2026
The cold of winter can leave your complexion dry, sallow, and desperate for hydration.
—Daisy Maldonado, InStyle, 2 Apr. 2026
Skin color was not black, observed Roggeveen, but pale yellow or sallow.
—Literary Hub, 28 Jan. 2026
The light blue shade counteracts purple and pink tones to cover redness and veins, while the peach shade brightens and corrects sallow-looking skin.
—Lily Wohlner, Allure, 23 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for sallow
Cite this Entry
“Sallow.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sallow. Accessed 10 Jun. 2026.
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