Tinct

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. A faint shade or tint of colour ; an archaic verb meaning to colour or tinge something lightly
2. A slight hue or coloring in something ; to dye or tinge a thing with a light colour
3. A delicate tone of colour in something ; in older usage, a verb for lightly staining or tinging an object

Etymology: "Tinct" and "tint" are doublets: two forms of one Latin word that reached English by different routes and ended up looking and sounding distinct. The Latin source is "tingere", "to tinge" or dye, whose past participle "tinctus" gave Middle English "tynct" as a noun and "tincten" as a verb, both borrowed directly from Latin rather than through French. Tint, by contrast, came in a different form, so the pair preserves the same Latin stem in two English shapes. Because the word was taken straight from Latin, it kept the hard "ct" cluster that French-derived words often softened. That spelling is why "tinct" still looks more Latin on the page than its near-twin. Its meanings stayed close to the original sense of dyeing or staining, so a tinct is a light coat of colour, and to tinct something is to colour it lightly, a sense that has largely dropped out of everyday use.

Synonyms: tincture, tint, hue, dye