Library / English Dictionary

PINK

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A light shade of red

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("pink" is a kind of...):

chromatic color; chromatic colour; spectral color; spectral colour (a color that has hue)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pink"):

pinkness (the quality of being pink)

carnation (a pink or reddish-pink color)

rose; rosiness (a dusty pink color)

purplish pink; solferino (a pink dye that was discovered in 1859, the year a battle was fought at Solferino)

apricot; peach; salmon pink; yellowish pink (a shade of pink tinged with yellow)

coral (a variable color averaging a deep pink)

Derivation:

pink (of a light shade of red)

pinkify (make pink)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A person with mildly leftist political views

Synonyms:

pink; pinko

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("pink" is a kind of...):

collectivist; left-winger; leftist (a person who belongs to the political left)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Any of various flowers of plants of the genus Dianthus cultivated for their fragrant flowers

Synonyms:

garden pink; pink

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Hypernyms ("pink" is a kind of...):

flower (a plant cultivated for its blooms or blossoms)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pink"):

Dianthus barbatus; sweet William (Eurasian pink widely cultivated for its flat-topped dense clusters of varicolored flowers)

carnation; clove pink; Dianthus caryophyllus; gillyflower (Eurasian plant with pink to purple-red spice-scented usually double flowers; widely cultivated in many varieties and many colors)

china pink; Dianthus chinensis; rainbow pink (Chinese pink with deeply toothed rose-lilac flowers with a purplish eye; usually raised as an annual)

Dianthus deltoides; maiden pink (low-growing loosely mat-forming Eurasian pink with a single pale pink flower with a crimson center)

cheddar pink; Diangus gratianopolitanus (mat-forming perennial of central Europe with large fragrant pink or red flowers)

button pink; Dianthus latifolius (much-branched pink with flowers in clusters; closely related to sweet William)

cottage pink; Dianthus plumarius; grass pink (European pink cultivated for its very fragrant pink or rosy flowers)

Dianthus supurbus; fringed pink (Eurasian perennial pink having fragrant lilac or rose flowers with deeply fringed margins)

Holonyms ("pink" is a member of...):

Dianthus; genus Dianthus (carnations and pinks)

 II. (adjective) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of a light shade of red

Synonyms:

pink; pinkish

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

chromatic (being or having or characterized by hue)

Derivation:

pink (a light shade of red)

 III. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cut in a zigzag pattern with pinking shears, in sewing

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "pink" is one way to...):

cut (separate with or as if with an instrument)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Sound like a car engine that is firing too early

Example:

The car pinked when the ignition was too far retarded

Synonyms:

knock; ping; pink

Classified under:

Verbs of seeing, hearing, feeling

Hypernyms (to "pink" is one way to...):

go; sound (make a certain noise or sound)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Sense 3

Meaning:

Make light, repeated taps on a surface

Example:

he was tapping his fingers on the table impatiently

Synonyms:

knock; pink; rap; tap

Classified under:

Verbs of seeing, hearing, feeling

Hypernyms (to "pink" is one way to...):

go; sound (make a certain noise or sound)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Credits

 Context examples: 

That trick of staining the fishes’ scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He contemplated the bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in them which had not yet died.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The spiral galaxy, identified as NGC 4631 or the "Whale Galaxy," is seen edge-on in the image, with its disk of stars shown in pink.

(Giant magnetic ropes seen in Whale Galaxy's halo, National Science Foundation)

Kitt, I should observe, was the name of the creature in pink, with the little eyes.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But why should not I wear pink ribbons?

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Any rod shaped, anaerobic bacteria that cannot convert carbohydrates into acids and alcohols and has a cell wall that contains low levels of peptidoglycan and stains pink with the Gram staining technique.

(Non-Fermentative Gram Negative Bacillus, NCI Thesaurus)

Why, bless her kindly heart, if I haven’t turned her from pink to white.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Infectious pink eye can easily spread from one person to another.

(Pinkeye, NIH: National Eye Institute)

Beneath its shade there sat a stout and elderly lady in a pink cote-hardie, leaning back among a pile of cushions, and plucking out her eyebrows with a small pair of silver tweezers.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"One moment, sir," I said, as I realized that it was a pink bald head, and not a red face, which was fronting me.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)