Colours for Hangman 🌈

Clues for every word

A one-line clue for every word, easy to hard, each one checked against a source - read them out when you run your own game. These words and clues are separate from the ones in the online game, so they won't give its answers away.

Hue

In painting, a pure colour with no white or black added; on a colour wheel it is often shown by its angle.

Dye

Coloured substance that dissolves, usually in water, so it can bind to the fabric it colours.

Tint

In colour theory, a colour mixed with white to make it lighter; it can also mean any lighter or darker version.

Shade

In colour theory, a colour mixed with black to make it darker; in everyday talk, any variety of a colour.

Cyan

Colour between blue and green on the spectrum; a primary colour in colour printing and the complement of red.

Ivory

Off-white with a very slight tint of yellow, named after the tusks of animals such as the elephant and walrus.

Hazel

Greenish-brown, the colour of a ripe nut from a tree or shrub; often used to describe the colour of eyes.

Fawn

Pale brown tinted with yellow, like a young deer; it is a coat colour in dog breeds such as Boxers and Pugs.

Neon

Describes a colour that is extremely bright and fluorescent, like the glowing light of some signs.

Ebony

Off-black colour named after a dark tropical hardwood that was used for fine furniture, notably for French kings.

Azure

Colour between cyan and blue on the colour wheel; in heraldry it is the name used for blue.

Taupe

Dark grey-brown colour whose name is the French word for a mole, the small underground mammal.

Auburn

Shade of red hair most often described as reddish-brown, though its name comes from an Old French word that meant blond.

Tangerine

Orange tone named after a mandarin-like citrus fruit; Blackpool football club has been linked with it since 1923.

Mahogany

Reddish-brown named after a wood, though the timber is not one even colour; first recorded as an English colour name in 1737.

Sienna

Earth pigment named after an Italian city-state that produced it in the Renaissance; heating turns it reddish-brown.

Puce

Brownish-purple whose French name means "flea colour"; it became popular in France in the late 18th century.

Champagne

Very pale yellowish-orange named after a drink; it is often used for gemstones and car paint to suggest luxury.

Pigment

Colouring substance that is nearly or completely insoluble, unlike a dye; living things make their own kinds too.

Primary

Describes colours that can be mixed in varying amounts to make many others, on screens, in printing and in paintings.

Terracotta

Reddish colour of fired clay, as in many flower pots; its Italian name literally means "baked earth".

Verdigris

Green to bluish-green patina that forms naturally on brass and some other metals; it was once an artists' pigment.

Cochineal

Scale insect of prickly pear cacti that gives its name to a red dye made from its dried bodies; used in some foods.

Cinnabar

Brick-red mercury mineral, the historic source of a brilliant red pigment; the Romans prized it as wall paint.

Gamboge

Deep-yellow pigment from the resin of a tree that grows mainly in Cambodia, whose old name it takes.

Glaucous

Pale grey or bluish-green, like the waxy coating on ripe plums; it also names birds such as a large gull.

Alizarin

Red dye once taken from madder plant roots; in 1869 it became the first natural dye to be made synthetically.

Monochrome

Describes a picture made of one colour or shades of it; at first, every photograph was made this way.

Iridescent

Describes a surface that seems to change colour as the viewing angle changes, like a soap bubble or butterfly wing.

Complementary

Describes pairs of colours that cancel each other out when mixed, and give a strong contrast side by side.