pigment
part of speech
noun (a pigment, pigments; pigment — uncountable)
meaning for a pupil
1) A pigment is a substance that gives colour to something, like the green in leaves or the colour of skin, hair and eyes. tree →
2) A pigment is also a coloured powder that is mixed with oil or water to make paint. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons pupils learn that chlorophyll is the green pigment that plants use to catch sunlight in photosynthesis, that leaves change colour in autumn when chlorophyll breaks down, and that melanin is the pigment in human skin, hair and eyes that helps protect from the sun. Chromatography separates the pigments in ink or leaves. In art and history lessons, early artists ground rocks and plants to make pigments for cave paintings.
examples
- Chlorophyll is the green pigment in leaves. tree →
- Melanin is a pigment in our skin. tree →
- Cave painters made pigments from red earth and charcoal. tree →
- We separated the pigments in a felt-tip pen using wet paper. tree →
- The artist mixed the blue pigment with oil. tree →
- In autumn the green pigment fades and the yellow shows through. tree →
- Some animals have no pigment and are pure white. tree →
note
Plural «pigments». Adjective «pigmented». A pigment is the colour stuff itself; paint is pigment mixed with a liquid. Do not confuse with «figment» («a figment of your imagination»).
In the corpora
- Oil paint is pigment mixed with oil, often linseed oil; it dries slowly, so painters could blend smoothly.
- A black panther is a leopard or jaguar with extra dark pigment, and its spots can still be seen in bright light.
- Most colours in nature are pigments, coloured chemicals that soak up some colours of light and send back the rest.
- Flamingos get their pink from pigments in the shrimps and algae they eat; fed without those pigments, they slowly turn white.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «pigment» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.