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New Word #110
There are a lot of words to describe different patterns of color, shades, arrangement, style, and material. However I only collected a few. Whenever I want to describe certain pattern, I often feel that I am lost for words. For example, how to describe the fall foliage, a table with tree rings, a marble counter of yellow and brown background and occasional patches of other color etc.
chiaroscuro: pattern of light and shade in a painting. I rarely see this word being used actually.
motley: incongruously varied in appearance or character.
checkered: squares of alternating colors.
variegated: displaying different colors in irregular shapes and patches.
striated, striped, streaked
- striated: marked with long, thin parallel streaks.
- striped: having stripes
- streaked: having a long, thin line or mark of a different substance or color from its surroundings
speck, speckle, fleck, freckle
- speckled: covered or marked with a large number of small spots or patches of color.
- freckled: covered with freckles
mottled: marked with spots or smears of color.
Dalmatian: a dog of a white, short-haired breed with dark spots.
stipple: mark (a surface) with numerous small dots or specks.
brindle, tabby, tuxedo (to describe a cat)
- brindle: a brownish or tawny color of animal fur, with streaks of other color.
- tabby: a cat whose fur is mottled or streaked with dark stripes.
- tuxedo: distinct black and white bi-colored coats that resemble a tuxedo
Haoyan Do 
Chiaroscura is definitely a new word for me. Now I have a word I can mutter while staring at a painting!
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Greetings from Viet Nam – I only use the word ‘chiaroscuro’ in reference to paintings, or possibly the lighting in a Black & White film. The word rarely comes up in everyday conversation.
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Great list. I didn’t know a number of these so definitely learnt some new words.
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This poem (Pied Beauty) by Gerard Manley Hopkins is quite well known: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44399/pied-beauty
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Colours are interesting also because different languages sometimes divide the spectrum up differently. eg Russian has different words for light and dark blue. Welsh sometimes uses the same word for blue and green. Etc I think I read somewhere that early languages had fewer colour words.
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Very interesting – in Vietnam the words for blue and green share the same stem, so students often confuse the colours. Famously, the robin red-breast was named before English had a word for orange.
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I didn’t know that about the robin but it makes sense that orange is a relatively recent colour-word since oranges would have been unfamiliar or unknown in England a few hundred years ago.
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Thank you for collection of words and their meanings. One surely does fall short of an apt word while describing designs.
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