Other forms: emeralds
An emerald is a green jewel — the deep, glassy green of a ring stone held up to a lamp. It is one of the four stones people call precious, alongside the diamond, the ruby and the sapphire.
Emerald is also the colour itself, and it works as an adjective: an emerald dress, emerald green paint, a lawn gone emerald after three days of rain. Ireland is the Emerald Isle because of how green the country looks from the air, and the city Dorothy walks towards in Oz is the Emerald City. The stone is a kind of beryl, and its green comes from traces of chromium sitting in the crystal. Say emerald and people picture a green far richer than grass: dark, wet, lit from inside. You would not call a pale mint wall emerald.
1nounstoneA precious stone of deep green, a variety of the mineral beryl.
“The ring held a single emerald set between two small diamonds.”
2adjectiveemeraldOf a strong, brilliant green.
“The hills came up emerald after a week of rain.”
3nounrichA rich, deep green colour.
“She chose emerald for the front door and never regretted it.”
The Greek σμάραγδος came into Latin as smaragdus, then softened through Vulgar Latin smaralda into Old French esmeraude and Middle English emeraude. Greek itself took the word from a Semitic language, where the neighbouring words are about flashing and sparkling — Hebrew for a flashing gem, Akkadian for scintillation, Arabic for a flash. The stone was named for what it does in the light before anyone named it for its colour.
Ancient Greek
σμάραγδος
Latin
smaragdus
Vulgar Latin
*smaralda
Old French
esmeraude
Middle English
emeraude
English, today
emerald
From Middle English emeraude, borrowed from Old French esmeraude, from Vulgar Latin smaralda, smaraldus, smaraudus, variant of Latin smaragdus, from Ancient Greek σμάραγδος, μάραγδος, from a sem - language. Compare Hebrew בָּרֶקֶת (“emerald, flashing gem”), akk 𒁀𒊏𒄣 literally “scintillation”, Arabic بَرْق literally “flashing”, egy bwyrqꜣ literally “to sparkle”:{{egy-h|D58-
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Colours & Patterns