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American Dictionary of the English Language

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Green


GREEN, adjective

1. Properly, growing, flourishing, as plants; hence, of the color of herbage and plants when growing, a color composed of blue and yellow rays, one of blue and yellow rays, one of the original prismatic colors; verdant.

2. New; fresh; recent; as a green wound.

The greenest usurpation.

3. Fresh; flourishing; undecayed; as green old age.

4. Containing its natural juices; not dry; not seasoned; as green wood; green timber.

5. Not roasted; half raw.

We say the meat is green when half-roasted.

[Rarely, if ever used in America.]

6. Unripe; immature; not arrived to perfection; as green fruit. Hence,

7. Immature in age; young; as green in age or judgment.

8. Pale; sickly; wan; of a greenish pale color.

GREEN, noun The color of growing plants; a color composed of blue and yellow rays, which, mixed in different proportions, exhibit a variety of shades; as apple green meadow green leek green etc.

1. A grassy plain or plat; a piece of ground covered with verdant herbage.

O'er the smooth enameled green

2. Fresh leaves or branches of trees or other plants; wreaths; usually in the plural.

The fragrant greens I seek, my brows to bind.

3. The leaves and stems of young plants used in cookery or dressed for food in the spring; in the plural.

GREEN, verb transitive To make green This is used by Thomson and by Barlow, but is not an elegant word, nor indeed hardly legitimate, in the sense in which these writers use it. 'Spring greens the year.' 'God greens the groves.' The only legitimate sense of this verb, if used, would be, to dye green or to change to a green color. A plant growing in a dark room is yellow; let this plant be carried into the open air, and the rays of the sun will green it. This use would correspond with the use of whiten, blacken, redden.