chroma

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek χρῶμα (khrôma, “colour”), in a Latinized form.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} In Greek the word meant the surface of the body or skin and its colour, then colour generally, and in the plural ornaments or embellishments;^[2] Etymonline derives it, through a verb meaning "to colour", from χρώς (khrṓs, “surface of the body, skin”).^[2] Etymonline notes that Beekes considers the noun of uncertain origin, and that a connection with Proto-Indo-European *gʰrew- (“to rub, grind”) has been proposed.^[2] The Greek word is also the base of chromatic and chrome.^[7][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Purity or intensity as a quality of colour: 1889, in the Century Dictionary.^[3][2][7] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1885–90.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word entered English as a technical term of colour science, for the degree to which a colour departs from a grey or white of the same lightness.^[2][3] In the Munsell colour system it became one of the three dimensions of colour, the one closest to saturation.^[7][4] With colour television it came to mean the colour component of the transmitted signal,^[9][5] and in music theory Merriam-Webster Unabridged records it for a pitch class and the quality shared by the pitches of one class.^[7]

Timeline

• 1889 – purity or intensity of a colour.^[3][2][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. The quality of a colour that shows how far it differs from a grey of the same lightness; saturation.^[9][7][4]
2. In the Munsell system, the colour dimension that corresponds most closely to saturation.^[7][4]
3. In colour television, the colour component of a coded signal.^[9][5]
4. (music) A pitch class, or the quality that makes a pitch sound like others of its class, such as notes an octave apart.^[7]

Word family

• chromatic
• chrominance

Related words

• chrome

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins