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suntan

UK/ˈsʌnˌtæn/US/ˈsʌnˌtæn/
nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans spoken

Other forms: suntans

A suntan is the brown colour skin turns after days outdoors. Melanin, produced as a defence.

That is the uncomfortable fact about it, since tanning is the skin responding to damage, and there is no such thing as a safe one. Fashion reversed entirely on this within a century, since pale skin signalled wealth when the poor worked outdoors and a tan signalled leisure once they worked in factories. Sunburn is the painful version and a fake tan avoids the sun altogether.

Definitions of suntan

  1. 1nounsuntanA browning of the skin caused by exposure to the sun.B2

    “He came back with a suntan and a cold.”

Also accepted in games: tan

Where it comes from

From sun + tan.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

suntan in the wild

  • Hawaiian Tropic is an American brand of suntan lotion that was founded by Ron Rice in 1969.

    Hawaiian Tropic

  • Typically the uniforms are red sequin two-piece uniforms (although they used to be leotards), suntan pantyhose, and big hair with white go-go boots.

    Crimsonettes

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.