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Glite Dictionary
🍭 A fluffy sweet 🌸 A pale pink
cotton candy

cotton candy

2 2.9
A pale pink colour like spun sugar
  • adjective
  • /ˈkɑtən ˈkændi/
  • US
translation icon : rosa pastel
  • A number of the women, looking like her in cotton-candy hair and tight dresses, gave me the eye as I cruised by.
  • cotton candy pink
  • cotton candy hair
  • cotton candy colors

So I ended up taking white right here and kind of grazing it over that neon just to give more of a soft cotton candy ombre type of a look.

Examples

  • I think the first dress looks like pink cotton candy (candy floss, as my European readers would say).

    Blog text (1)

  • The walls of the nursery were painted a soft cotton candy pink, creating a warm and inviting atmosphere.

  • On this bright summer day, it was more like translucent cotton candy.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • Leaning forward, watching what was happening, she sat in the front seat between the two boys, her hair framed like cotton candy around her face.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Another pretty look could be to just do the cotton candy all over the lid and then fade that into the plum.

  • The birthday girl's hair has been pressed in blonde, cotton-candy wisps against her forehead to disguise a receding hairline.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • She wore a dress in a beautiful cotton candy shade, perfect for the spring celebration.

  • The sunset painted the sky in delicate hues of cotton candy, blending pink and orange beautifully.

How Pale

white
∞ 1.0
cotton candy
  • US
2 2.9
pink-tinged
1 3.5
pink
43 1.0
deep-pink
1 1.8

Surface Forms

cotton candy positive

Morphology

cotton + candy

The adjective derives from the confection 'cotton candy' (spun sugar) and its conventional pale pink/ pastel appearance, so the colour sense is based on reference to that item rather than a literal composition of 'cotton' + 'candy'. A B1 learner who only knows the constituent words may not predict the specific pastel-pink colour without world knowledge of the sweet, so the relation is partially transparent but requires extra cultural/lexical knowledge.

Etymology

Cotton candy as a colour comes from the candy's pale pink look: the spun sugar reminded people of cotton, so they began using that soft, sugary pink as a colour name. So calling something 'cotton candy' means it has a pale, sweet pink colour.