Beige is a pale sandy brown. A beige carpet, painted beige, beige walls.
It carries a reputation for dullness that no other colour has quite earned — calling a person or an opinion beige means bland. The word first named the colour of undyed wool, which is exactly the shade it still describes.
1adjectivebeigeA pale sandy brown colour.
“The hotel room was painted beige, with brown curtains and a cream carpet.”
beige is a colour.
French beige first named the colour of undyed wool or cotton, from an Alpine dialect word.
Ancient Greek
βύσσος — cotton homespun
Latin
byssus — cotton
Vulgar Latin
*bysseus — cottony grey
Old French
bege — color of undyed wool or cotton
French
(dialectal) beige
English, today
beige
Built from
French (dialectal) beige, from Old French bege (“color of undyed wool or cotton”), from an Alpine language (compare Franco-Provençal bézho, Romansch besch (“dull grey”)), from Vulgar Latin bysseus (“cottony grey”) (compare French bis, Catalan bis, Italian bigio), from Latin byssus (“cotton”), from Ancient Greek βύσσος (“cotton homespun”), from sem (compare Hebrew -/arc - בוץ). a doublet of bice.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA