Pronunciations (5)
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/ˈbɹaʊ̯n/
Pronunciation notes
- Canada
- General-American
- Received-Pronunciation
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/ˈbɹæʊ̯n/
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/ˈbɹaːn/
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/bɹuːn/
Pronunciation notes
- Northumbria
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bɹaʊn
Noun
A colour like that of chocolate or coffee.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
- Examples
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The browns and greens in this painting give it a nice woodsy feel.
He wore brown jeans for his birthday.
One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of 4 points.
Usage- Countable
Black tar heroin.
Usage- Uncountable
A copper coin.
Usage- Archaic
- Countable
- Slang
- Examples
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“To save a journey up the town, / A razor lent here for a brown: / But if you think the price too high, / I beg you won’t the razor try.”
More examples (1)
I know there are many persons — some who are themselves poor — who 'never turn a beggar from their door,' but always give them a few browns (halfpence) or some scran (broken victuals).
"We've not had any breakfast,—won't you toss us down a brown?"— That's what they call a penny in the streets of London Town.
A brown horse or other animal.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
- Examples
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[…] browns are the soberest, bays are the worst tempered, and chestnuts are the most foolish.
A person of mostly Latin American (or Latino), Middle Eastern/North African, South Asian, and sometimes Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, or rarely Native American descent; a brown-skinned person; someone of mulatto, or biracial appearance.
Usage- capitalized
- Countable
- ethnic
- Informal
- slur
- sometimes
- Examples
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Many browns and blacks are immigrants — some of whom have not yet become naturalized citizens of the United States.
More examples (1)
For example, a Brown Asian Caucus emerged at the inaugural National Conference on Asian American Mental Health in 1972 – where Filipinos were joined by Pacific Islanders who also felt marginalized as part of the Asian American/ Pacific Islander (AAPI) umbrella group.
Any of various nymphalid butterflies of subfamily Satyrinae (formerly the family Satyridae), such as those of the genera Heteronympha and Melanitis.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
A brown trout (Salmo trutta).
Usage- Countable
- Informal
- Uncountable
A mass of birds or animals that may be indiscriminately fired at.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
- as "the brown"
- Examples
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More examples (2)
The temptation to have a shot into the brown was great. There was not a head there which was not a big one and the one by himself was not too easy a shot since it is always difficult to shoot when lying in soft snow.
My anger mounted at this, I opened the courtyard door and raised my musket to fire into the brown; I had loaded it with small shot, and if it had gone off that would have been the death of us and the ruin of all of us in the house.
A brown dye or pigment.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
A pen, pencil, crayon, etc., made of brown pigment.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
Adjective
Having a brown color/colour.
- Examples
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More examples (1)
But none of those brown dwarfs were speeding along on a trajectory that would carry them out of the galaxy like “runaway” hypervelocity stars observed by astronomers in the last two decades.
Gloomy.
Usage- Obsolete
Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin. Latino/Latin American
Usage- US usage
- capitalized
- sometimes
- Examples
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More examples (1)
Reminds me of the time they asked me and a group of other Latino, predominantly Mexican, friends for our passports when we tried to go to their [expletive] party a little over a year ago.[…] The saddest part is that I don’t think they understand why it’s insulting to ask a brown person for a passport.
Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin. of color.
Usage- US usage
- broadly
- capitalized
- sometimes
- Examples
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More examples (1)
By Saad’s accounting – and this is not dissimilar from the white nationalist “great replacement theory” – western societies are bringing about their own destruction by admitting immigrants from poorer, browner and more Muslim countries.
Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin. South Asian or sometimes Middle Eastern or North African
Usage- capitalized
- sometimes
- of Asians and Africans
- Examples
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More examples (2)
I think they sort of realized like, oh, we have Aasif who is a Muslim, an American, brown person, you know, who can sit on that fence between cultures and sort of talk about what it is--what this is from the perspective of being an insider and an outsider at the same time.[…] I think there is in the sort of South Asian, you know, psyche, a kind of adoration of Western ideals and culture that was sort of implanted into us by the British, you know, and this idea that everything that is Western is superior and better than what we have and what India--you know, what is true to our own culture.
What’s interesting, when you look past all the hysterical bullshit about brown people and trans kids and the imaginary woke mind virus, is that Hanson’s new converts in Farrer and South Australia are angry about the same shit as everyone else, whether that’s a Lebanese-Australian bricklayer in Claymore, an Indian dental nurse in Ipswich, or some lentil-muffin-eating, lumpy-jumper-wearing goat yoga enthusiast in Teal Town.
Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin. Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, or sometimes Native American
Usage- capitalized
- sometimes
- of East-Eurasian ancestry
- Examples
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More examples (1)
I came to deeply embrace anti-racism in slow, sustained increments. To do so, I had to embrace my own identity as a Brown person -- and understand my own complicity in white supremacy.[…] I had grown up in an entire Southeast Asian culture that had largely been groomed, indoctrinated and brainwashed into white-centered thinking over some 450 years of colonization by our Western overlords: Spain for almost 400 years, and then the United States of America for nearly 50 years more.
Not green (environmentally irresponsible); anti-green (against environmental protection).
- Examples
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Near-synonyms: nongreen, antigreen
More examples (1)
Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain’s biggest retailers, are locked in a fierce battle to prove who is greener. Even BSkyB, the British satellite outpost of the distinctly brown Murdoch empire, has declared itself “carbon-neutral.”
Verb
To become brown.
Usage- Intransitive
- Synonyms
- Examples
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Fry the onions until they brown.
The chicken was browning nicely, the skin beginning to crisp and take on the toasty tones of oiled wood.
More examples (1)
Don't microwave your milk too long It browns and bubbles over
Synonym of poop (“to defecate”).
Usage- childish
- Examples
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I've just browned myself.
To cook something until it becomes brown.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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Pound an onion, warm a spoonful of ghee and throw in the onion, brown it slightly, add your curry stuff, brown this till it smells pleasantly, […]
To tan.
Usage- Intransitive
- Transitive
- Examples
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Light-skinned people tend to brown when exposed to the sun.
To make brown or dusky.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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A trembling twilight o'er the welkin moves, / Browns the dim void and darkens deep the groves.
To give a bright brown colour to, as to gun barrels, by forming a thin coating of oxide on their surface.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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More examples (1)
It is mixed uniformly with olive oil, and rubbed upon the iron slightly heated, which is afterwards exposed to the air, till the wished-for degree of browning is produced.
To turn progressively more Hispanic or Latino, in the context of the population of a geographic region.
Usage- Derogatory
- ethnic
- Intransitive
- Offensive
- Slang
- slur
- Transitive
- usually
- Examples
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the browning of America
Adjective
of a color similar to that of wood or earth
(of skin) deeply suntanned
- Synonyms
Noun
an orange of low brightness and saturation
- Synonyms
Verb
fry in a pan until it changes color
- Broader terms
- Examples
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brown the meat in the pan
make brown in color
- Synonyms
- Examples
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the drought browned the leaves on the trees in the yard