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There comes a moment in every young crayon user’s life when they graduate from the 8-count (or 16-count, perhaps) box to the treasure trove of 64 glorious sticks of differently colored wax, when they discover that there isn’t just one brown or orange or blue, that when it comes to colors, the sky’s the limit! Such a moment is often the first encounter people have with the word cerulean, a word that slips sibilantly off the tongue like a balmy ocean breeze. Like azure, cerulean describes things whose blue color resembles that of a clear sky; it’s often used in literature (especially travel writing) to paint an enticing image of an even more enticing vista, as in “the cerulean waters of a tropical lagoon.” While azure is thought to hail from the Persian word lāzhuward, with the same meaning, cerulean comes from the Latin adjective caeruleus, meaning “dark blue.” That word most likely comes from caelum, meaning “sky.”
Examples of cerulean in a Sentence
Kaila Yu, Forbes, 9 Mar. 2025
The video reflects the dream-like quality of the song, with a house floating up into the cerulean sky and following J-Hope as passersby on the street watch in awe and confusion.
—Maya Georgi, Rolling Stone, 7 Mar. 2025
Growing up in a fishing community on the cerulean shores of Uganda’s Lake Albert, Julius Tumwine listened to adults around him speak of oil with reverence.
—Sophie Neiman, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Feb. 2025
Dust devils curled upwards toward the cerulean sky.
—Sue Mead, Popular Science, 13 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for cerulean
Cite this Entry
“Cerulean.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cerulean. Accessed 25 Mar. 2025.
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cerulean
adjective
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