Link Centre Dictionary

teal

UK/tiːl/ US/tiːɫ/ fairly common
noun (2) adjective (1)

noun

1.

a shade of green tinged with blue

  • “they painted it a light shade of bluish green”
Synonyms
2.

any of various small short-necked dabbling river ducks of Europe and America

adjective

1.

Origin

From Middle English tele, probably from an unrecorded Old English *tǣle, cognate with West Frisian tjilling (“teal”), Middle Dutch teling (“teal”) (modern Dutch taling), Middle Low German telink, from Proto-Germanic *tailijaz, of unknown ultimate origin, with no cognates outside of Germanic. Compare feal and heal for similar phonological development. As the name of a shade of dark greenish-blue like the color patterns on the fowl's head and wings, it is attested from 1923. The Australian political sense derives from the colour teal being intermediate between green (signifying environmentalism) and blue (signifying the conservative Australian Liberal Party).

Phrases

  • Baikal teal
  • black teal
  • Brazilian teal
  • brown teal
  • Cape teal
  • chestnut teal
  • cinnamon teal
  • common teal

Related words

Broader terms

Narrower terms

Parts

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.