Word of the Day
: June 10, 2018roseate
playWhat It Means
1 : resembling a rose especially in color
2 : overly optimistic : viewed favorably
roseate in Context
"Sometimes mistaken for a flamingo, the roseate spoonbill has lots of pink shades that can fool you." — Lyle Johnson, The Gonzales Weekly Citizen (Ascension, Louisiana), 26 Apr. 2018
"… the Catalan channels, richly funded by the local parliament and putting nationalist devotees in charge, has created a roseate picture of independence that simply doesn't fit the facts." — Peter Preston, The Observer (London), 10 Dec. 2017
Did You Know?
"Everything's coming up roses." "He views the world through rose-tinted glasses." "She has a rosy outlook on life." In English, we tend to associate roses and rose color with optimism, and roseate is no exception. Roseate comes from the Latin adjective roseus, and ultimately from the noun rosa, meaning "rose." Figurative use of roseate (with the meaning "happy" or "smiling") began in the 18th century, but the literal sense of the term has been in the language since the 15th century. It's especially well-suited to literary descriptions of sunrises and sunsets: "through yon peaks of cloud-like snow / The roseate sunlight quivers," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in Prometheus Unbound. And in an early short story, Edith Wharton wrote, "The sunset was perfect and a roseate light, transfiguring the distant spire, lingered late in the west."
