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taupe

UK/təʊp/US/toʊp/
adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,629 of 15,258leans spoken

Taupe is a grey-brown, quiet and neutral. Painted taupe, a taupe carpet, taupe and cream.

It sits between grey and brown and is a favourite of interior designers precisely because it commits to neither. Nobody agrees on exactly what it is, which is part of the joke about it. The word is French for a mole, and the colour is named after the animal's fur. Note that greige is the newer word for the same uncertainty.

Definitions of taupe

  1. 1adjectivetaupeOf a grey-brown neutral colour.C1

    “She chose taupe curtains that went well with the grey sofa.”

taupe is a colour.

Where it comes from

French taupe means a mole, from Latin talpa. The colour is named after the animal's fur, which is exactly the shade in question.

  1. Latin

    talpa — mole

  2. French

    taupe

  3. English, today

    taupe

Borrowed from French taupe, from Latin talpa (“mole”). a doublet of talpa.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Colours & Patterns

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taupe in the wild

  • The word derives from the French noun taupe meaning "mole".

    Taupe

  • Taupe is a vague color term which may refer to almost any grayish brown or brownish gray, but true taupe is difficult to pinpoint as brown or gray.

    Taupe

  • Aside from La taupe et les papillons, which was never performed, all premieres took place in Paris.

    List of operas by Étienne Méhul

  • Charissa mucidaria, the coppery taupe, is a moth of the family Geometridae.

    Charissa mucidaria

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.