incarnadine

Meaning

Adj

1. (archaic, literary) Of the pale pink or pale red colour of flesh; carnation.
2. (archaic, literary) Of the blood-red colour of raw flesh; crimson.
3. (archaic, figuratively, literary) Bloodstained, bloody.
4. (archaic, literary) Of a red colour.

Noun

1. (archaic, countable, literary, uncountable) The pale pink or pale red colour of flesh; carnation.
2. (archaic, countable, literary, uncountable) The blood-red colour of raw flesh; crimson.
3. (archaic, countable, literary, uncountable) A red colour.

Verb

1. (archaic, literary, transitive) To make flesh-coloured.
2. (also, archaic, figuratively, literary, transitive) To make red, especially blood-coloured or crimson; to redden.

Synonyms

scarlet

vermilion

crimson

carnation

flesh color

carnatio

flesh

🥩

redden

rouge

Translations

fleischfarben

purpurrot

βάφω ερυθρό

incarnadin

incarnadino

vuurrood

encarnado

encarnar

kan kırmızısı

kızıla boyamak

pembemsi

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ɪnˈkɑːnədiːn/

Etymology

The adjective is derived from French incarnadin, incarnadine, from Italian incarnadino, a variant of incarnatino (“carnation; flesh colour”), from incarnato (“embodied, incarnate”) + -ino (suffix forming adjectives denoting composition, colour, or other qualities). Incarnato is derived from Ecclesiastical Latin and Late Latin incarnātus (“having been made incarnate”), the perfect passive participle of incarnō (“to become or make incarnate; to make into flesh”), from in- (suffix meaning ‘in, inside, within’) + Latin carō (“flesh, meat; body”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs).
The noun and verb are derived from the adjective.
Adjective senses 2 and 3 (“of the blood-red colour of raw flesh; (figurative) bloostained, bloody”) and noun sense 2 (“blood-red colour of raw flesh”) are due to William Shakespeare’s use of the word as a verb in Macbeth (c. 1606): see the quotation below.