Art & MusicGreek → English
Polychrome
/ˈpɑlɪkroʊm/adjective
Decorated or executed in several colours.
The Greek roots
πολύς
polýs
many
χρῶμα
chrôma
colour
Literally: “many-coloured”
The story of the word
The word became an argument in the nineteenth century. Traces of pigment found on Greek temples and statues showed that the marble everyone admired for its purity had been painted in strong reds, blues and golds, and defenders of the white ideal fought the evidence for decades. Ultraviolet imaging has since recovered whole patterns from surfaces that look bare. What the classical revival took for restraint was weathering.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
monochromechromaticpolygonpolymer
In a sentence
The reconstructed polychrome archer is startling if you grew up on white plaster casts.
A polychrome tile floor runs the length of the nave.