tanned

UK/tænd/US/tænd/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,013 of 15,258leans spoken

Tanned means browned by the sun. Deeply tanned, tanned arms, come back tanned.

The brown is melanin produced as damage response, which is why a tan is a record of injury rather than a sign of health — the idea that it means the opposite dates from the 1920s and a change in fashion. Leather is tanned by a different process with the same name. Note tan, tanning.

Definitions of tanned

1adjectivetannedBrowned by the sun.B2+
“She came back from her beach holiday looking tanned and relaxed.”

tanned is a quality of colour.

Practised in Body & Health

Practise this word

tanned in the wild

Sun tanning or tanning is the process whereby skin color is darkened or tanned.
Sun tanning
Shell cordovan, cordovan, or cordwain is a type of tanned leather.
Shell cordovan
Some leather sold as "buckskin" may now be sheepskin tanned with modern chromate tanning chemicals and dyed to resemble real buckskin.
Buckskin (leather)
Unlike common leather, sheepskin is tanned with the fleece intact, as in a pelt.
Sheepskin
The most common type of leather oiled is vegetable tanned leather.
Oiling (leather processing)

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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.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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