Other forms: painting, painted, paints
To paint is to put colour onto walls or canvas with a brush. Paint the door, paint a picture, freshly painted.
Paint is pigment carried in a binder, and the binder is what decides everything — oil, water, acrylic. Two thin coats cover better than one thick one, which is the first rule of decorating. Figuratively, to paint a picture means to describe something vividly. Note paint the town red; painted lady, a butterfly; and that paint displaced an older English word that has left no trace.
1verbverbTo put colour onto a surface with a brush.
“We painted the kitchen walls a pale yellow last weekend.”
2nounliquidThe coloured liquid itself.
“Don't touch the door; the paint is still wet.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
paint is a colouring.
Old French peindre comes from Latin pingere, to paint. Picture, pigment and depict come from the same root, and paint pushed out the Old English word tiefran entirely.
Old French
peintier
Middle English
peynten
English, today
paint
Built from
From Middle English peynten, from Old French peintier. From Middle English peynten, from Old French peintier, paincter, itself from paint, the past participle of paindre, from Latin pingō (“to paint”) (perfect passive participle pictus). Displaced native tēafor, tīefran (“to paint”); and mētan and mǣlan (“to paint, mark with colour”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA