Yellowness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The attribute that signifies a hue predominantly associated with the color yellow is identified as a distinctive visual trait
2. A condition that denotes the presence of a yellowish tint characterizes an object's visual perception
3. The quality that describes the characteristic of being predominantly yellow in color is recognized as a significant visual feature

Etymology: Yellowness is about as plain as English compounds get: the adjective "yellow" with the suffix "-ness" attached, which turns a quality into a noun for that quality. The suffix itself is old. It descends from a Proto-Germanic formation, passed through Old English as "-nes", and by Middle English had become "-nesse", the same ending found in words like "kindness" and "happiness". The adjective is the more interesting half. "Yellow" traces back to a Proto-Germanic "gelwaz", which is also the ancestor of its Old English form "geolu", and it belongs to a family of colour words whose roots reach back to a very old Indo-European base meaning "to shine" or "to gleam". Colour names often grew out of descriptions of brightness or light rather than hue, and "yellow" is one of those. Middle English recorded the noun as "yelownesse", a direct formation from the adjective, and English kept the pattern: the word is simply the quality of being yellow, put into noun form.

Synonyms: yellow hue, golden color