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Glite Dictionary
primary color

primary color

5 2.2
A basic color like red, blue, or yellow that you mix to make other colors
  • noun
  • /ˈpraɪˌmɛri ˈkʌlər/
  • US
translation icon : color primario
  • When painting, you can use the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue to mix all sorts of beautiful shades.
  • the three primary colors
  • primary color is red

There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever be seen.

Examples

  • That's a nice primary color, easy to see contrast with.

  • First, we have the three primary colours, blue, yellow and red.

  • When you start getting more than one primary color, you have red and yellow.

  • So we're just really getting, you know, that primary color type look here with the yellow and then the blue.

  • Red, green, and blue being the primary colors of light up that you see with your eyes.

  • And, obviously, we need more teams with a tint of red as their primary color.

    Blog text (12)

  • Blue, yellow, and red are the three primary colors which I prefer to call hues.

  • Go to the grocery store, walk down the candy aisle, see all of those different primary colors and wonder why you kind of freeze up.

  • Maya, we need bold, brilliant, vibrant, primary colors here.

    Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief (2008)

  • Individual flowers blend into masses of soft, primary colors that swirl and flow against a gentle grass-green background.

    Academic text (1996)

Surface Forms

primary color singular
primary colors plural

Morphology

primary + color

The meaning is directly built from 'primary' (foundational, most important) + 'color' (visual attribute), so a learner who knows both words will infer it refers to the basic/fundamental colors used to make others. This is a regular adjective+noun composition with clear cross-linguistic equivalents, making it immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.

Etymology

The phrase primary color comes from the idea that the word primary means 'first' and color means a basic color you cannot make by mixing others. So artists use simple colors like red, blue and yellow as the 'building blocks' to mix all the rest, and that is why primary color means a basic color used to make other colors.