crayon

See also: Crayon and crayón

English

Wax crayons.

Etymology

Borrowed from French crayon (“pencil”), from craie (“chalk”) + -on (“(diminutive)”), from Latin creta (“chalk, clay”), from crētus.

Pronunciation

• enPR: krāʹŏn
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹeɪ.ɒn/, /ˈkɹeɪ.ɒ̃/, /ˈkɹeɪ.ən/

    • Audio (Southern England):

      (file)

  • (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹeɪ.ɑn/; also /ˈkɹeɪ.ɔn/ (the most common pronunciations, used by 83% of Americans)

    • Audio (Southern California):

      (file)

    • Audio (New York City):

      (file)

• (US, uncommon, especially Northeastern US, Midwestern US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹæn/, [ˈkɹeən]

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (US, rare, especially Philadelphia, New Jersey, sometimes Southern US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹaʊn/, [ˈkɹɛɔn], [ˈkɹæɔn]
• Rhymes: -eɪɒn, -eɪən, -æn, -aʊn

Noun

crayon (plural crayons)

1. A stick of colored chalk or wax used for drawing.

   Hyponym: Conté

2. A colored pencil, a colouring pencil

   Synonyms: pencil crayon (Canada), colouring pencil (UK)

   • 1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], →OCLC:

     Let no day pass over you […] without giving some strokes of the pencil or the crayon.

3. (dated) A crayon drawing, or a drawing with colored lines.
   • 1885, Littell's Living Age, volume 167, page 187:

     But on the wall hung two fine crayons, representing Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette — pictures which she recognized as having hung in the corridor of the Tuileries — and in front of them were burning two candles on a species of rude altar.

4. (dated) A pencil of carbon used in producing electric light.

Derived terms

• crayon board
• crayon license
• meat crayon
• not the sharpest crayon in the box
• porte-crayon
• sauce crayon

 

Related terms

• cretaceous

Translations

colored chalk or wax

• Armenian: գունավոր մատիտ (gunavor matit), գունավոր կավիճ (gunavor kavič), նկարչական ածուխ (nkarčʻakan acux)
• Bulgarian: пасте́л m (pastél)
• Catalan: llapis de color m
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 蠟筆／蜡笔 (laap⁶ bat¹)

  Hokkien: 蠟筆／蜡笔 (zh-min-nan) (la̍h-pit)

  Mandarin: 蠟筆／蜡笔 (zh) (làbǐ)

• Cornish: kreyon m
• Czech: pastelka (cs) f, barevná tužka, krajon m
• Dutch: waskrijt (nl) n, vetkrijt (nl) n, wasco (nl) n
• Finnish: väriliitu, värit (fi)
• French: pastel (fr) m, craie de cire f
• German: Wachsmalstift (de) m
• Greek: κηρομπογιά (el) f (kirompogiá)
• Hungarian: zsírkréta (hu)
• Irish: crián m
• Italian: pastello (it) m
• Japanese: クレヨン (ja) (kureyon)
• Korean: 크레용 (ko) (keureyong)
• Lao: ສໍສີມັນ (lo) (sǭ sī man)
• Maori: penehinu
• Polish: kredka (pl) f, kredka woskowa f, kredka świecowa f, świecówka f (informal)
• Portuguese: pastel (pt) m, giz de cera m (Brazil), lápis de cera m (Portugal)
• Russian: цветно́й каранда́ш m (cvetnój karandáš), пасте́ль (ru) f (pastɛ́lʹ)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: крејон m

  Roman: krejon (sh) m, krajon (sh) m

• Slovene: voščenka f
• Spanish: creyón (es) m (Colombia, Venezuela), crayón (es) m (Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Uruguay), crayola f (Cuba, Mexico, Peru), cera (es) f (Spain), pintura de cera f (Spain)
• Swedish: krita (sv)
• Thai: สีเทียน (sǐi-tiian), สีชอล์ก (sǐi-chɔ́k)
• Turkish: pastel boya (tr)
• Vietnamese: viết chì màu
• Yoruba: ẹfun ìkùnwé

colored pencil

• Dutch: kleurpotlood (nl) n

Verb

crayon (third-person singular simple present crayons, present participle crayoning or crayonning, simple past and past participle crayoned or crayonned)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To draw with a crayon.

References

• “crayon”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Further reading

• crayon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• acyron

French

Etymology

From craie (“chalk”) +‎ -on (diminutive), from Latin crēta (“chalk, clay”), from crētus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kʁɛ.jɔ̃/, /kʁe.jɔ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

crayon m (plural crayons)

1. pencil
2. (colloquial) pen
3. (vulgar, slang) cock, dick, prick

Descendants

• → English: crayon
• → Esperanto: krajono
• → German: Crayon
• → Greek: κραγιόν (kragión)
• → Moore: keryõ
• → Romanian: creion
• → Spanish: crayón, clarión

Further reading

• “crayon”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.