crayon

crayon

See also: Crayon and crayón

English

Wax crayons.

Etymology

Borrowed from French crayon (“pencil”), from craie (“chalk”) + -on (“(diminutive)”), from Latin creta (“chalk, clay”), from crētus.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹeɪ.ən/, /ˈkɹeɪ.ɒn/, /ˈkɹeɪ.ɒ̃/

  • Audio (UK)

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹeɪ.ɒn/; also /ˈkɹeɪ.ɔn/ (the most common pronunciations, used by 83% of Americans)[1]
• (US) enPR: krāʹän
• (US, uncommon, especially Northeastern US, Midwestern US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹæn/, [ˈkɹeən][1]
• (US, rare, especially Philadelphia, New Jersey, sometimes Southern US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹaʊn/, [ˈkɹɛɔn], [ˈkɹæɔn][1]
• Rhymes: -eɪɒn, -eɪɔn, -eɪən, -æn, -aʊn

• Audio (US - Southern California)

  (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

crayon (plural crayons)

1. A stick of colored chalk or wax used for drawing.

   Hyponym: Conté

2. A colored pencil, a colouring pencil

   Synonym: pencil crayon

   • 1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, John Dryden, transl., De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], OCLC 261121781:

     Let no day pass over you […] without giving some strokes of the pencil or the crayon.

3. (dated) A crayon drawing, or a drawing with colored lines.
   • 1885, Littell's Living Age (volume 167, page 187)

     But on the wall hung two fine crayons, representing Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette — pictures which she recognized as having hung in the corridor of the Tuileries — and in front of them were burning two candles on a species of rude altar.

4. (dated) A pencil of carbon used in producing electric light.

Derived terms

• crayon board
• crayon license
• not the sharpest crayon in the box
• porte-crayon
• sauce crayon

 

Related terms

• cretaceous

Translations

colored chalk or wax

Armenian: գունավոր մատիտ (gunavor matit), գունավոր կավիճ (gunavor kavič), նկարչական ածուխ (nkarčʿakan acux) Bulgarian: пасте́л m (pastél) Catalan: llapis de color m Chinese: Cantonese: 蠟筆, 蜡笔 (laap6 bat1) Mandarin: 蠟筆／蜡笔 (zh) (làbǐ) Min Nan: 蠟筆 (zh-min-nan), 蜡笔 (la̍h-pit) Cornish: kreyon m Czech: pastelka (cs) f, barevná tužka, krajon m Dutch: kleurpotlood (nl) n Finnish: väriliitu, värit (fi) French: pastel (fr) m, craie de cire f German: Wachsmalstift (de) m Greek: κηρομπογιά (el) f (kirompogiá) Hungarian: zsírkréta (hu) Irish: crián m Italian: pastello (it) m Japanese: クレヨン (ja) (kureyon) Korean: 크레용 (ko) (keureyong) Lao: ສໍສີມັນ (lo) (sǭ sī man) Maori: penehinu Polish: kredka (pl) f, kredka woskowa f, kredka świecowa f, świecówka f (informal) Portuguese: pastel (pt) m, giz de cera m (Brazil), lápis de cera m (Portugal) Russian: цветно́й каранда́ш m (cvetnój karandáš), пасте́ль (ru) f (pastɛ́lʹ) Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: крејон m Roman: krejon (sh) m, krajon (sh) m Slovene: voščenka f Spanish: creyón (es) m (Colombia, Venezuela), crayón (es) m (Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Uruguay), crayola f (Cuba, Mexico, Peru), cera (es) f (Spain), pintura de cera f (Spain) Swedish: krita (sv) Thai: สีเทียน (sǐi-tiian), สีชอล์ก (sǐi-chɔ́k) Turkish: pastel boya (tr) Vietnamese: viết chì màu

Verb

crayon (third-person singular simple present crayons, present participle crayoning or crayonning, simple past and past participle crayoned or crayonned)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To draw with a crayon.

References

• crayon at OneLook Dictionary Search

1. Harvard Dialect Survey

Further reading

• crayon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• acyron

---

French

Etymology

craie (“chalk”) +‎ -on (diminutive), from Latin crēta (“chalk, clay”), from crētus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kʁɛ.jɔ̃/, /kʁe.jɔ̃/

• audio

  (file)

Noun

crayon m (plural crayons)

1. pencil
2. (colloquial) pen
3. (vulgar, slang) cock, dick, prick

Descendants

• → English: crayon
• → Esperanto: krajono
• → German: Crayon
• → Moore: keryõ
• → Romanian: creion
• → Spanish: crayón, clarión

Further reading

• “crayon”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.