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View synonyms for pastel

pastel

1

[ pa-stel; especially British pas-tl ]

noun

  1. a color having a soft, subdued shade.
  2. a kind of dried paste made of pigments ground with chalk and compounded with gum water.
  3. a chalklike crayon made from such paste.
  4. the art of drawing with such crayons.
  5. a drawing so made.
  6. a short, light prose study or sketch.


adjective

  1. having a soft, subdued shade.
  2. drawn with pastels:

    a pastel portrait.

pastel

2

[ pas-tel ]

noun

  1. the woad plant.
  2. the dye made from it.

pastel

/ pæˈstɛl; ˈpæstəl /

noun

    1. a substance made of ground pigment bound with gum, used for making sticks for drawing
    2. a crayon of this
    3. a drawing done in such crayons
  1. the medium or technique of pastel drawing
  2. a pale delicate colour
  3. a light prose work, esp a poetic one
  4. See woad
    another name for woad


adjective

  1. (of a colour) pale; delicate

    pastel blue

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Derived Forms

  • ˈpastelist, noun

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Word History and Origins

Origin of pastel1

First recorded in 1610–20; from French, from Italian pastello, from Late Latin pastellus, variant of Latin pastillus pastille

Origin of pastel2

First recorded in 1570–80; from Middle French pastel “woad,” from Provençal, from Medieval Latin pastellum (neuter) “woad” (originally “woad paste”), for Late Latin pastellus (masculine), diminutive of pasta paste

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Word History and Origins

Origin of pastel1

C17: via French from Italian pastello, from Late Latin pastellus woad compounded into a paste, diminutive of pasta paste 1

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Example Sentences

Instead of just using Amazon to buy another pastel daily planner dotted with flowers from Blue Sky, a company run by two men, I spent twice as much to buy one directly from Bloom Daily Planners, a company founded and run by women.

From Time

It’s been roughly 80 years since the Xerces blue butterfly was last spotted flitting about on pastel wings across coastal California sand dunes.

That’s slightly less remarkable in the case of McGinley, a Pennsylvania pastel artist whose drawings are at Martha Spak Gallery alongside Erin Raedeke’s still lifes.

Aesthetically, everything from her album cover to her Instagram is a nod to her age, a slew of pastel colors and cooler-than-you photo shoots that show off her trendy fashion sense.

From Time

The figures in the Athenaeum show, drawn with pastel and pencil and supplemented by paint, are loose yet realistic.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West awkwardly embrace in color-coordinated pastel suits for their re-imagined Vogue cover.

The pastel outdoor furnishings look like leftovers from a closed nursery school, while inside collared shirts seem overdressed.

Thorns support is for everyone, and there are no pastel colors or condescending cursive.

When we first came by, the chefs were experimenting with Lucky Charms ice cream, including little pastel marshmallows.

So they joyfully rode their new pastel bikes around the park for a while, until it was time to go to their first ballet class.

It was almost dawn, and the garden lay like a rare pastel outside his window; but Eric saw none of it.

It was suddenly a mixture of muddled colors, instead of the carefully blended pastel shades he had selected.

For this, in the winter of 1873, he made a pastel, a richly robed figure carrying a Japanese umbrella.

There are a number of small studies and sketches in oil and pastel that show he knew what he wanted.

The pose was natural to her, she said, though he made a number of pastel schemes before he painted it.

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