| / English Dictionary |
MELLOW
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Slightly and pleasantly intoxicated from alcohol or a drug (especially marijuana)
Synonyms:
high; mellow
Classified under:
Similar:
drunk; gone; inebriated; intoxicated; ripped (stupefied or excited by a chemical substance (especially alcohol))
Derivation:
mellowness (geniality, as through the effects of alcohol or marijuana)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Softened through age or experience
Example:
the peace of mellow age
Synonyms:
mellow; mellowed
Classified under:
Similar:
soft (compassionate and kind; conciliatory)
Derivation:
mellowness (a soft shade of a color)
mellowness (the property of a sensation that is rich and pleasing)
mellowness (a feeling of good humor and sympathy through maturity or intoxication or a relaxed state)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Having a full and pleasing flavor through proper aging
Example:
mellowed fruit
Synonyms:
mellow; mellowed
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
mature; ripe (fully developed or matured and ready to be eaten or used)
Derivation:
mellowness (a taste (especially of fruit) that is ripe and of full flavor)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Unhurried and relaxed
Example:
a mellow conversation
Synonyms:
laid-back; mellow
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
relaxed (without strain or anxiety)
Derivation:
mellowness (geniality, as through the effects of alcohol or marijuana)
II. (verb)
Verb forms
Present simple: I / you / we / they mellow ... he / she / it mellows
Past simple: mellowed
Past participle: mellowed
-ing form: mellowing
Sense 1
Meaning:
Make or grow (more) mellow
Example:
The sun mellowed the fruit
Classified under:
Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.
Hypernyms (to "mellow" is one way to...):
soften (become soft or softer)
Sentence frames:
Something ----s
Something ----s something
Derivation:
mellowing (the process of becoming mellow)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Become more relaxed, easygoing, or genial
Example:
With age, he mellowed
Synonyms:
mellow; mellow out; melt
Classified under:
Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.
Hypernyms (to "mellow" is one way to...):
change (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature)
Verb group:
mellow (soften, make mellow)
Sentence frame:
Something ----s
Derivation:
mellowing (the process of becoming mellow)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Soften, make mellow
Example:
Age and experience mellowed him over the years
Classified under:
Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.
Hypernyms (to "mellow" is one way to...):
soften (make soft or softer)
Cause:
mellow (make or grow (more) mellow)
Verb group:
mellow; mellow out; melt (become more relaxed, easygoing, or genial)
Sentence frames:
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something
Derivation:
mellowing (the process of becoming mellow)
III. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
In a mellow manner
Synonyms:
mellow; mellowly
Classified under:
Context examples:
In similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like flame, or that glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of the arid desert of common speech.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
There was the wide-spread building which he knew so well, the Abbot's house, the long church, the cloisters with their line of arches, all bathed and mellowed in the evening sun.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester possessed a fine voice: he did—a mellow, powerful bass, into which he threw his own feeling, his own force; finding a way through the ear to the heart, and there waking sensation strangely.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Let it wait and ripen, was her father's advice, and he practiced what he preached, having waited patiently thirty years for fruit of his own to ripen, and being in no haste to gather it even now when it was sweet and mellow.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot, starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of the sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in the distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the Mexican's face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting of the steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the cries, the two bodies, his and the Mexican's, locked together, rolling over and over and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling of a guitar.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Ah, if you could but see my own dear Pisa, the Duomo, the cloisters of Campo Santo, the high Campanile, with the mellow throb of her bells upon the warm Italian air!
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture- fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Five years after Jo's wedding, one of these fruitful festivals occurred, a mellow October day, when the air was full of an exhilarating freshness which made the spirits rise and the blood dance healthily in the veins.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
His thin lips, like the dies of a machine, stamped out phrases that cut and stung; or again, pursing caressingly about the inchoate sound they articulated, the thin lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases of glow and glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a bugle, from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases that sounded clear as silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that epitomized the final word of science and yet said something more—the poet's word, the transcendental truth, elusive and without words which could express, and which none the less found expression in the subtle and all but ungraspable connotations of common words.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
“Such a dainty color! Such a mellow voice! Eyes of a bashful maid, and hair like a three years' babe! Voila!”
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
