Word of the Day:

August 21, 2018

cerulean

adjective suh-ROO-lee-un

What it Means

: resembling the blue of the sky

Cerulean in Context

"The images in Nicolas Party's paintings are simple, vivid, inexplicably funny, and profoundly odd. He paints the face of a man in a brown hat with a large snail on top, against a background of cerulean blue." — Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue, June 2018

"The new oceanfront pool is scheduled to debut by summer's end…; complete with cabanas and a second tiki bar serving food all day, it will bring guests even closer to the cerulean Atlantic." — Alexandra Kirkman, Forbes, 2 July 2018

More example sentences

Did You Know?

Cerulean comes from the Latin word caeruleus, which means "dark blue" and is most likely from caelum, the Latin word for "sky." An artist rendering a sky of blue in oils or watercolors might choose a tube of cerulean blue pigment. Birdwatchers in the eastern U.S. might look skyward and see a cerulean warbler (Dendroica cerulea). Cerulean is not the only color name that's closely associated with the sky. Azure (which ultimately comes from a Persian word for "lapis lazuli," a rich blue stone) describes the color of a cloudless sky and can even be a noun meaning "the unclouded sky."

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What color is cerise?

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