crayon

English

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 (US - Southern California)

      (file)

    • Audio (NYC)

      (file)

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

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• (US, rare, especially Philadelphia, New Jersey, sometimes Southern US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹaʊn/, ,
• 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 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

Related terms

• cretaceous

Translations

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 , 2012.