Art & MusicGreek → English
Monochrome
/ˈmɑnəkroʊm/adjective
Made in shades of one colour only.
The Greek roots
μόνος
mónos
single, alone
χρῶμα
chrôma
colour
Literally: “single colour”
The story of the word
μονόχρωμος was already a painter's term in Greek for work done in a single hue, and English borrowed it in the seventeenth century for exactly that. Photography took it over for black and white, and computing narrowed it again to a screen with one phosphor colour, usually that green or amber glow of the early 1980s. χρῶμα in Greek covered skin as well as pigment, which is why chromosome, named for the parts of the cell that took up stain, literally means coloured body.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
polychromeachromaticchromosomemonologue
In a sentence
She shot the whole series in monochrome to keep the eye on the shapes.
The lobby is monochrome apart from one red chair.