A.Word.A.Day --fulvous

A.Word.A.Day

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Jul 7, 2025

This week’s theme
Words related to colors

This week’s words
fulvous
festucine
spadiceous
verdazurine
versicolored

Fulvous shrike-tanager

Photo: Hector Bottai / Wikimedia

Previous week’s theme
Unusual antonyms

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Last year, during what he called “Freedom Summer”, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis banned colors -- all but red, white, and blue -- he didn’t find suitable to light up bridges at night. (WashPost, Permalink)

Because nothing says freedom like policing your palette, your menu, and your reading list.

Here at Wordsmith.org we celebrate all colors. This week we’ll feature five words related to colors he likely does not approve of.

Share your favorite tint, shade, or neon dream below or drop us a technicolor line at words@wordsmith.org. Include your location (city, state).

fulvous

PRONUNCIATION:

(FUHL-vuhs)

MEANING:

adjective: Tawny; brownish-yellow or orange.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin fulvus, from flavus (yellow). Earliest documented use: 1664.

USAGE:

“The woman with outstretched arms, looking out on the sun as it rises or sets over a fulvous hillside.”
Jason Farago; Terrains That Tap Into the Inner Self; The New York Times; Feb 7, 2025.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)

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