complexion
See also: complexión and complex ion
Contents
EnglishEdit
Alternative formsEdit
- complection (obsolete)
EtymologyEdit
From Middle English complexion (“temperament”), from Old French complexion, French complexion, from Latin complexiō (“a combination, connection, period”), from complecti, past participle complexus (“to entwine, encompass”)
PronunciationEdit
- (General American) IPA(key): /kəmˈplɛkʃən/
Audio (GA) (file) - Rhymes: -ɛkʃən
- Hyphenation: com‧plex‧ion
NounEdit
complexion (plural complexions)
- (obsolete, medicine) The combination of humours making up one's physiological "temperament", being either hot or cold, and moist or dry.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book III, canto X:
- Ne ever is he wont on ought to feed / But todes and frogs, his pasture poysonous, / Which in his cold complexion doe breed / A filthy blood […]
- 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. In Six Volumes, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: Printed by A[ndrew] Millar, […], OCLC 928184292:
- “Indeed, sir,” answered the lady, with some warmth, “I cannot think there is anything easier than to cheat an old woman with a profession of love, when her complexion is amorous; and, though she is my aunt, I must say there never was a more liquorish one than her ladyship. […]
- The quality, colour, or appearance of the skin on the face.
- a rugged complexion; a sunburnt complexion
- 1596-99?, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act II, scene i:
- Prince of Morocco: Mislike me not for my complexion, / The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun, / To whom I am a neighbour, and near bred. [...]
- 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0108:
- This new-comer was a man who in any company would have seemed striking. In complexion fair, and with blue or gray eyes, he was tall as any Viking, as broad in the shoulder.
- (figuratively) The outward appearance of something.
- Outlook, attitude, or point of view.
- 1844, E. A. Poe, Marginalia
- But the purely marginal jottings, done with no eye to the Memorandum Book, have a distinct complexion, and not only a distinct purpose, but none at all; this it is which imparts to them a value.
- 1844, E. A. Poe, Marginalia
- (loanword, especially in scientific works translated from German) An arrangement.
- 1909, Ludwig Boltzmann, translated by Kim Sharp and Franz Matschinsky
- Second there is the level at which the energy or velocity components of each molecule are specified. He calls this a Komplexion, which we translate literally as complexion.
- 1909, Ludwig Boltzmann, translated by Kim Sharp and Franz Matschinsky
SynonymsEdit
- See also Thesaurus:countenance
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
appearance of the skin on the face
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VerbEdit
complexion (third-person singular simple present complexions, present participle complexioning, simple past and past participle complexioned)
- (transitive) To give a colour to.
- 2003, Leland Krauth, Mark Twain & Company: Six Literary Relations (page 118)
- From the pale refinement of her genteel heroine to the sallow complexioning of poor white trash, Stowe colors her narrative with the hues of the body.
- 2003, Leland Krauth, Mark Twain & Company: Six Literary Relations (page 118)
Further readingEdit
- complexion in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- complexion in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
Old FrenchEdit
EtymologyEdit
First known attestation circa 1120[1], borrowed from Latin complexiō.
NounEdit
complexion f (oblique plural complexions, nominative singular complexion, nominative plural complexions)
- (medicine) complexion (combination of humours making up one's physiological "temperament")
ReferencesEdit
- ^ “complexion” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).
- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (complession, supplement)