Alternative spellings

• colour (UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, India)

Noun

Singular color

Plural colors

color (plural colors) (US)

1. The spectral composition of visible light.

   Humans and birds can perceive color.

2. A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class; blee.

   Most languages have names for the colors black, white, red, and green.

3. Hue as opposed to achromatic colors (black, white and greys).

   He referred to the white flag as one "drained of all color".

4. Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity.

   Color has been a sensitive issue in many societies.

5. (figuratively) interest, especially in a selective area.

   a bit of local color.

6. In corporate finance, details on sales, profit margins, or other financial figures, especially while reviewing quarterly results when an officer of a company is speaking to investment analysts.

   Could you give me some color with regards to which products made up the mix of revenue for this quarter?

7. (physics) A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons.

Color or colour (see spelling differences) is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light energy versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects, materials, light sources, etc., based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra. By defining a color space, colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates.

Because perception of color stems from the varying sensitivity of different types of cone cells in the retina to different parts of the spectrum, colors may be defined and quantified by the degree to which they stimulate these cells. These physical or physiological quantifications of color, however, do not fully explain the psychophysical perception of color appearance.

The science of color is sometimes called chromatics. It includes the perception of color by the human eye and brain, the origin of color in materials, color theory in art, and the physics of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range (that is, what we commonly refer to simply as light).