''roseate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904152658-00-⌔

roseate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

roseate (comparative more roseate, superlative most roseate)

• (formal, chiefly zoology) Like the rose flower; pink; rosy.
  • ✤ Synonyms: pink, pinkish, rosy
  • ✤ The countess took the roseate palm and snowy fingers of this lovely child.¹
  • ✤ Now the rum, as has been said, was criminally overproof, and they had had no intoxicants for a long time. And so a couple of stiff drinks produced a beautiful and generous expansion of soul. The mean cabin became larger, the fire warmer and more cheerful, and life generally of a more roseate hue. They began to feel the prodigal Thanksgiving spirit, and to regret their limited opportunities for satisfying it.²
  • ✤ On Professor Solanka’s street, well-heeled white youths lounged in baggy garments on roseate stoops, stylishly simulating indigence while they waited for the billionairedom that would surely be along sometime soon.³
• Full of roses.
  • ✤ To fund the purchase, he had to sell a late Renoir, The Judgment of Paris, with its depiction of weighty ladies frolicking in a roseate garden.⁴
• (figurative) Rosy; optimistic.
  • ✤ Nothing could have seemed more assured and roseate than her professional future.⁵
  • ✤ Viewed from this perspective, the behaviour of the digital giants looks rather different from the roseate hallucinations of Wired magazine.⁶

Etymology

From Middle English roseat, from Anglo- Latin roseātus, equivalent to rose +‎ -ate (adjective-forming suffix).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA: /ˈɹoʊzi.ət/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈɹəʊzɪət/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

1. 1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter VII, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC: ↩

2. 1922, A. M. Chisholm, A Thousand a Plate: ↩

3. 2001, Salman Rushdie, Fury: A Novel, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, page 4: ↩

4. 2018, Thom Nickels, Philadelphia Mansions: Stories and Characters behind the Walls: ↩

5. 1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC: ↩

6. 2019 January 20, John Naughton, “‘The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩