Other forms: lilacs
A lilac is the garden shrub that puts out fat cones of tiny purple flowers every May, and the scent carries right across the garden. Someone cuts a branch and jams it in a jug on the kitchen table, and the whole room smells of it for a week.
The flowers gave their name to the colour. Lilac is pale purple with pink in it, softer than violet and much softer than purple, which makes it an adjective as well: a lilac cardigan, walls painted lilac. The plural, lilacs, covers the bushes or the cut sprays. The flowering is short, a fortnight at most, which is why people talk about lilac time. And there are white lilacs, which throws everybody the first time.
1nounlilacA shrub with heart-shaped leaves and dense cones of small, strongly scented flowers.
“The lilac by the gate flowers for two weeks and then it is over.”
2nounhintA pale purple colour with a hint of pink in it.
“The bedroom walls were a chalky lilac.”
3adjectivecolourOf a pale pinkish purple.
“She wore a lilac scarf against a grey coat.”
English took lilac from an old French spelling of the word, which French now writes lilas, and French had it from Arabic līlak. The colour is named after the flower rather than the other way round: the shrub arrived carrying its name, and the paint charts came later.
French
lilac
English, today
lilac
Borrowed from French lilac. From obsolete French lilac (now lilas), from Arabic لِيلَك.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Trees & Flowers