Red

Pronunciation

• enPR: rÄ•d, IPA: /ɹɛd/
• Homophones: read past tense/participle

From Middle English red, from Old English rēad, from Proto-Germanic *raudaz (compare West Frisian read, Low German root, rod, Dutch rood, German rot, Danish rød), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rowdʰós, from the root *h₁rewdʰ- (compare Welsh rhudd, Latin ruber, rufus, Tocharian A/B rtär/ratre, Ancient Greek ἐρυθρός, Albanian pruth ("redhead"), Old Church Slavonic рудъ, Lithuanian raúdas, Avestan raoidita, Sanskrit रुधिर 'red, bloody').

Full definition of red

Adjective

1. Having red as its color.The girl wore a red skirt.
• ShakespeareYour colour, I warrant you, is as red as any rose.
2. Of hair, having an orange-brown colour; ginger.Her hair had red highlights.
3. (often capitalized) Leftwing, socialist, or communist.
• "Only Nixon could go to China" was the refrain of conventional wisdom during Richard Nixon’s 1972 official visit to Mao Tse-tung’s regime. Nixon’s anti-communist credentials, however dubious, provided useful camouflage as he opened diplomatic relations with Red China and made breathtaking concessions that an undisguised liberal couldn’t get away with. http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1998/vo14no16/vo14no16_dragon.htm
4. (US, modern) Supportive of or dominated by the political party represented by the color red, especially the U.S. Republican Party.a red statea red Congress
5. (US, modern) Of, pertaining to, or run by (a member of) the political party represented by the color red, especially the U.S. Republican Party.a red advertisement
6. (British) Supportive of the Labour Party.
7. (Germany, politics) Related to the Social Democratic Party of Germany.the red-black grand coalition
8. (astronomy) Of the lower-frequency region of the (typically visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum which is relevant in the specific observation.

Antonyms

• (having red as its colour) nonred, unred

Derived terms

Noun

1. (countable and uncountable) Any of a range of colours having the longest wavelengths, 670 nm, of the visible spectrum; a primary additive colour for transmitted light: the colour obtained by subtracting green and blue from white light using magenta and yellow filters; the colour of blood, ripe strawberries, etc.
2. (countable) A revolutionary socialist or (most commonly) a Communist; usually capitalized a Bolshevik, a supporter of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War.
3. (countable, snooker) One of the 15 red balls used in snooker, distinguished from the colours.
4. (countable and uncountable) Red wine.
5. (slang) The drug secobarbital; a capsule of this drug.
• 1971, Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Harper Perennial 2005), page 202:The big market, these days, is in Downers. Reds and smack—Seconal and heroin—and a hellbroth of bad domestic grass sprayed with everything from arsenic to horse tranquillizers.
6. (informal) A red light (a traffic signal)
7. (Ireland, UK, beverages, informal) red lemonade

Derived terms

From the archaic verb rede.

Verb

1. (archaic)

   red

   (past of rede)

From Old English hreddan ("to save, to deliver, recover, rescue"), from Proto-Germanic *hradjanÄ….

Verb

1. (colloquial) Alternative spelling of redd

Middle English, from Middle Low German, compare Dutch redden.

Verb

1. (transitive, Pennsylvania) Alternative spelling of redd

Anagrams

• DRE, ERD