ungreen

English

Etymology

From Middle English ungrene, from Old English ungrēne (“not green”), from Proto-West Germanic *ungrōnī (“not green”), equivalent to un- +‎ green. Compare West Frisian ûngrien (“ungreen”), Dutch ongroen (“ungreen”), German ungrün (“not green”), Danish ugrøn (“ungreen”), Swedish ogrön (“ungreen”), Icelandic ógræn (“ungreen”).

Adjective

ungreen (not comparable)

1. (uncommon) Not green.
   • 1970, John McIntosh, The Stonefish, page 193:

     The ungreen emerald ring went round and round, and the ungreen emerald earrings swung: Thelma was working at the rim of her glass, too.

   • 1972, Dissertation Abstracts International, page 76:

     The ungreen virescent exhibits a low rate of true photosynthesis (on both a leaf fresh weight and chlorophyll basis) compared to wild-type.

   • 1973, Robert Snukal, High Talk: The Philosophical Poetry of W. B. Yeats, page 61:

     Adam is also a member of the class of ungreen things, and by virtue of being ungreen can be an icon for ungreen things. But a poet who wanted to talk about ungreenness would have to take special pains to get us to notice that Adam was ungreen.

   • 2020, Andrzej Jarczewski, The Verbal Philosophy of Real Time, page 122:

     This clearly demonstrates the problem of multivalence because ungreen colors are many.

2. Having little or no vegetation or plant matter.
   • 1903, Society for Psychical Research, Proceedings - Volume 17, page 241:

     It is funny for the seaside, it looks such a “house-ified' place, it's an ungreen seaside.

   • 2008, Jim Chevallier, Après Moi, Le Dessert: A French Eighteenth Century Model Meal, page 25:

     The same article includes a recipe for a rather ungreen salad: Salad of mixed meat

   • 2009, Eliot Greenspan, Nicholas Gill, Charlie O'Malley, Frommer's? Central America, page 448:

     More popular with visiting schoolchildren than tourists, the arboretum is worth a visit for anyone craving greenery in this ungreen city.

   • 2012, Emma Williams, It's Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street:

     Later on Jerusalem would thread its enchantment and I would fall to its allure, but at first all I saw—despite the forest—was a dusty, ungreen, and unwatered land, the dry Judean hills stretching away toward the Dead Sea, whose dark dullness we could glimpse from viewpoints in the neighborhood.

   • 2013, Tim Dee, Four Fields, page 1:

     The road had been transported or turned over into a kind of field and the grass was announcing itself in our ungreen and ungrowing world

   • 2017, Bruce Beasley, The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems, page 34:

     Tell me why seedpods are pouring through a forest that has not a single ungreen spot to fill.

   • 2017, Anxo Cereijo Roibás, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Design for Sport:

     New Yorker's attended hockey and boxing at Madison Square Garden, an enclosed ungreen place, while Catalans follow one of the major global brands in football at the decidedly permanent and imposing Camp Nou.

3. Lacking sap or vitality; desiccated.
   • 1875, Charles John Palmer, The Perlustration of Great Yarmouth, with Gorleston and Southtown, page 77:

     The sheriff of Norfolk had power to search for and seize any "sound, dry, and ungreen" wood which he could find, and send the same to the Fletchers or arrow makers to be made into sheaves, tipped with steel heads according to a pattern in the Tower of London.

   • 1981, Euripides, Helen, page 71:

     She scorched the ungreen fields, starving men of the yields of each expected crop;

   • 1989, Children's Environments Quarterly:

     Common examples were that trees are tall while other plants are short, and that soft-stemmed plants die each year after the rains stop while trees are hardy, surviving the dry season in a dry and ungreen state.

   • 2014, Cheri Fuller, Sandra P. Aldrich, The One Year Women's Friendship Devotional:

     Looking at those vines reminds me that when I feel most ungreen and unproductive, when things aren't going well, if I stay connected to Jesus, the true Vine, as today's verse says, he will bring forth not just some fruit but much fruit.

4. Environmentally unfriendly; harmful to or inconsiderate of the environment.
   • 1991, 1992 Earth Journal: Environmental Almanac and Resource Directory, page 305:

     There are green products packaged in ungreen ways. Ungreen products wrapped in green ways. Green products from ungreen companies. And green companies making ungreen products.

   • 1992, Dominik Koechlin, Kaspar Müller, Green Business Opportunities: The Profit Potential, page 71:

     In other words, they are very unlikely to cut down on purchases in a particularly ungreen product category in order to increase their purchasing in a particularly green one.

   • 2017, Jo Ritzen, A Second Chance for Europe, page 100:

     In this way, a shift in consumption is encouraged away from “ungreen” goods and services.

   • 2018, Victoria K. Wells, Diana Gregory-Smith, Danae Manika, Research Handbook on Employee Pro-Environmental Behaviour, page 15:

     Fourth, the definition encompasses both positive green behaviours that benefit the environment and negative ungreen behaviours that actively harm the environment.

Antonyms

• green
• lush
• environmentally friendly

Verb

ungreen (third-person singular simple present ungreens, present participle ungreening, simple past and past participle ungreened)

1. (dyeing) To expose to air after dyeing in indigo so that the greenish color fades away.
   • 1854, James Burch Robb, A Collection of Patent Cases Decided in the Supreme and Circuit Courts, from Their Organization to the Year 1850, page 213:

     When necessary to air and ungreen, by drawing the pulley the frame rises, and the cloth drains into the vat.

   • 1861, Richard Gibson, The Art of Dyeing All Colors on Raw Cotton Or Cotton Waste, for the Purpose of Working with Raw Wool, page 206:

     After the expiration of this time, suspend a second lock of wool for ten or fifteen minutes in the Vat; when it comes out, it should be of a deeper shade, and more like a grass green than the first lock was: it will take a little over five minutes to ungreen it, when it will assume almost a Middle Blue, with a slight tinge of Green, after it has been exposed to the air for half an hour.

   • 1878, John Lord Hayes, Notes Upon Indigo, page 34:

     After each immersion the champignon is lifted out of the vat, and the fabrics are left to ungreen themselves by contact with the air. (It must be observed that, although soluble indigo is called white, because it is without color when carefully prepared in the laboratory, the goods, when first taken from the ordinary vat, are of a green color.)

2. To make or become familiar with and adept in handling a new environment.
   • 1850, Charles Cuthbert Southey, The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey - Volume 5, page 227:

     Freshmen are called greens, and a ceremony was (and perhaps is) used in ungreening them, and admitting them to their full academical privileges.

   • 1908, The Hartford Seminary Record - Volume 18, page 289:

     The period of “ungreening” is closed by a solemn meeting where the novitiates are addressed by the president of the Corporation.

   • 1960, Jacob Ralph Schwartz, Orchard Street, page 205:

     Then the short period of orientation ( “sich oisgreenen" ) to ungreen the greenhorn; to look up landsleit and relatives; to learn a few words of English; to familiarize oneself with the new surroundings and environment;

   • 1996, Nahma Sandrow, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater, page 129:

     At the turn of the century Yiddish audiences were still greenhorns fighting to "ungreen" themselves .

3. To change from green to some other color, as occurs with leaves in the autumn.
   • 2005, Kevin McGrath, Flyer, page 47:

     Harvests are congratulated She is pleased with the sight, Sweet hard apples and Small ungreening leaves.

   • 2005, Judith Freeland, Try to Remember:

     We watched the ungreening of the trees as they put on their fall wardrobes of bright colors.

   • 2016, Barbara Hurd, Listening to the Savage: River Notes and Half-heard Melodies, page 86:

     For these two weeks every August, the katydid chorus overlaps the buntings' song while the efts crawl up the trail along the river and the breakdown of chlorophyll begins to ungreen the leaves.

4. To urbanize or become less environmentally friendly.
   • 1971, City - Volume 5, page 50:

     John Robinson, in “Highways and Our Environment," complains that the highway system not only has disfigured our countryside by slapping down acres of concrete that threatens to ungreen America, but also carries an increasing number of cars that further befoul the environment by thrusting more pollutants into the air.

   • 2004, Gerald Nadler, William Chandon, Smart Questions, page 256:

     “Socioeconomic threshold” refers to a combination of societal and economic acceptable levels of the six factors to measure purpose accomplishment—in effect, how much “ungreening” would be tolerated by the citizenry before there was a demand for action.

   • 2015, Sabine Wilke, German Culture and the Modern Environmental Imagination, page 35:

     The ungreening world insistently intrudes as natural fact, as cultural locus, and – so pastoral reminds us – as literary tradition.

   • 2017, Imre Kovách, Keith Halfacree, Leadership and Local Power in European Rural Development:

     According to Munters, the 'ungreening' of local political power positions was 20 to 30 years behind the 'ungreening' of the rural community population.

Anagrams

• green 'un