Turquoise is the blue-green of shallow tropical sea. It is the colour of a swimming pool at noon, of a copper roof gone soft with age, and of the stone the colour is named after, the opaque blue-green one set in heavy silver rings.
The word does two jobs. As a noun it is the stone, a soft mineral dug up and prized for thousands of years, in Egyptian tombs and across the tiled domes of Iran. As an adjective it is the colour: a turquoise scarf, a door painted turquoise. Say it TUR-koyz or TUR-kwoyz, both are accepted. Where exactly turquoise stops being blue and starts being green is argued about at every paint counter, so if it matters, say more blue or more green.
1adjectiveturquoiseOf a bright colour between blue and green.~42%
“The shutters were painted turquoise and had faded on the sunny side.”
2nounstoneA blue-green mineral used in jewellery, prized since ancient times.~16%
“She wore a heavy silver ring set with a single turquoise.”
3nounitselfThe colour itself, between blue and green.~42%
“The whole room was done in turquoise and white.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
In Old French the stone was pierre turquoise, the Turkish stone. It was never Turkish. It was mined in Persia, near Nishapur in Khorasan, and reached Europe through Turkish traders, so Europeans named it after the road it came down rather than the ground it came from. Copper did the same thing, taking its name from Cyprus.
Old French
(pierre) turquoise — Turkish (stone)
Middle French
turquoise
English, today
turquoise
From Middle French turquoise, from Old French (pierre) turquoise (“Turkish (stone)”), from turc + ois. The stone, mined near Nishapur in the Khorasan region of Persia, was originally brought to Europe through Turkey. a doublet of Turkish. Compare typologically copper (<< Κύπρος (“Cyprus”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA