Word for Wednesday: Yellow

blog home

Our Word for Wednesday theme for January is colours. 

The word colour entered English via Old French and comes from the Latin ‘color’, from the Old Latin ‘colos’ meaning ‘a covering’, from the PIE root ‘kel-’ meaning ‘to conceal’. The word has been used in reference to skin colour since the early-thirteenth century and in reference to pigments and dye since the fourteenth century. 

The spelling colour became the common English spelling from the fourteenth century, but a classical correction made color an alternative from the fifteenth century. Color is now the common American English spelling of this word.

So far we’ve looked at the words red and orange. Today’s word is yellow. 

Yellow falls between orange and green on the colour spectrum and is the hue of ripe lemons, sunflowers, and egg yolks. 

The word comes from the Old English ‘geolwe’, from the Proto Germanic ‘gelwaz’, which in turn comes from the PIE ‘ghel’ meaning ‘to shine’.

In Greek mythology, 'Khloe' is a name for the goddess of harvest – the name literally means ‘young green shoot’ and is linked to ‘khloros’ meaning ‘greenish-yellow’. Can you hear the similarity between ‘yellow’ and ‘Khloe’?


20 Jan 2021
blog home

"Spellzone fits in beautifully with our Scope and Sequence of Phonological Awareness and Spelling. It also aligns perfectly with the four areas of spelling knowledge and uses the Brain, Ears, Eyes approach to learning spelling."
Thank you!

Teacher, Australia