Other forms: pigments
A pigment is the coloured powder that gives paint its colour. Grind the pigment, a natural pigment, pigment and binder.
Paint is pigment plus something to stick it down, and the same pigment in oil, water or acrylic gives three different paints. Some historical pigments were dangerous — lead white and Paris green among them — and are no longer made.
1nounpigmentThe coloured powder that gives paint its colour.
“The artist mixed the blue pigment with oil to make her own paint.”
pigment is a powder.
Latin pigmentum comes from pingere, to paint. Picture and paint are relatives.
Latin
pigmentum — pigment
Middle English
pigment
English, today
pigment
Built from
From Middle English pigment, from Latin pigmentum (“pigment”), itself from pingō (“to paint”) + -mentum; variants of this word may have been known in Old English (e.g. 12th century pyhmentum). a doublet of pimiento and pimento and piment.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA