''amber'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260919121947-00-⌔

amber - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺

Noun

amber (countable and uncountable, plural ambers)

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• (obsolete) Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale. [14th–18th c.]
  • ✤ * Ambre is hote and drye […] Some say that it is the sparme of a whale.*¹
  • ✤ As for Amber Grice, or Amber Cane, which ist most sweet myngled with other sweete thynges: some say it commeth from the rocks of the Sea. […] Some say it is gotten by a fish called Azelum, which feedeth upon Amber Grece, and dyeth, which is taken by cunnyng fishers and the belly opened, and this precious Amber found in hym.²
  • ✤ The head of this fish is as hard as stone. The inhabitants of the Ocean sea coast affirme that this fish casteth foorth Amber; but whether the said Amber be the sperma or the excrement thereof, they cannot well determine.³
  • ✤ Slaves […] with silver Censors […] perfum’d the air with Amber, Aloes wood, and other Scents.⁴
  • Formerly thought to be the product of a plant.
    • ✤ The leaves of the foreſt were loaded with manna, pure amber dropped from every bough, honey diſtilled from the rifted rock, and the humming bee, drunk with joy, ſtrayed from flower to flower, forgetful of his burſting cells.⁵
• A hard, generally yellow to brown translucent or transparent fossil resin from extinct coniferous trees of the pine genus, used for jewellery, decoration and later dissolved as a binder in varnishes. One variety, blue amber, appears blue rather than yellow under direct sunlight. [from 15th c.]
  • ✤ With scarfs and fans and double change of bravery,
    With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery.⁶
  • ✤ Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit.⁷
  • ✤ To shew this by example, we reade of Sabina Poppcea, to whom nothing was wanting, but shame and honestie, being extremely beloved of Nero, had the colour of her haire yellow, like Amber, which Nero esteemed much of, […].⁸
  • ✤ “My roses are yellow,” it answered; “as yellow as the hair of the mermaiden who sits upon an amber throne, and yellower than the daffodil that blooms in the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe.”⁹
  • ✤ Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are […]. (Common gem materials not addressed in this article include amber, amethyst, chalcedony, garnet, lazurite, malachite, opals, peridot, rhodonite, spinel, tourmaline, turquoise and zircon.)¹⁰
• A yellow-orange colour.
  • ✤ amber:
  • ✤ And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.¹¹
• (UK, Commonwealth, Australia) The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, which when illuminated indicates that drivers should stop when safe to do so. See also yellow light.
  • ✤ While earlier controllers provided concurrent ambers, present practice is to indicate a minimum intergreen period of 4 s.¹²
  • ✤ Also flashing ambers are not operational at this type of crossing.¹³
  • ✤ >Problem: Red-red signals are too time consuming when traffic density is higher.
    I don’t find them time consuming at all. I find them identical to ambers.¹⁴
• (biology, genetics, biochemistry) The stop codon (nucleotide triplet) “UAG”, or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.
  • ✤ an amber codon, an amber mutation, an amber suppressor
  • ✤ For example, to cross a temperature-sensitive mutation with an amber mutation, amber suppressor cells are infected at the low (permissive) temperature.¹⁵
  • ✤ Double ambers revert at 10${}^{-8}$ −10${}^{-9}$, and therefore, reversion is negligible. Double-amber mutants are made by crossing single-amber mutants with each other.¹⁶
• (uncountable) Hesitance to proceed, or limited approval to proceed; an amber light.
  • ✤ […] in response to the actions I just described, business was given the green light, and now we seem to be on amber.¹⁷

Adjective

amber (comparative more amber, superlative most amber)

• Of a brownish yellow colour, like that of most amber.
  • ✤ They all moved safely through the first green and then the second, but when the third light turned amber Jack’s taxi was the last to cross the intersection.¹⁸
  • ✤ Ahead, a cool breeze swept the pale morning sun across a grassy meadow turned amber by morning’s frost.¹⁹

Verb

amber (third-person singular simple present ambers, present participle ambering, simple past and past participle ambered)

• (transitive, rare) To perfume or flavour with ambergris.
  • ✤ * ambered wine, an ambered room*
• (transitive, rare) To preserve in amber.
  • ✤ an ambered fly
• (transitive, rare, chiefly poetic or literary) To cause to take on the yellow colour of amber.
  • ✤ For purple mountains majesty; for amber waves of grain*.*²⁰
  • ✤ Home to the mosaic of coloured-lit windows in the black and white houses, the fake gas lamps ambering the cobbles, sometimes the scent of applewood smoke.²¹
  • ✤ The firelight flickered on her rounded cheeks, ambering the pale skin.²²
• (intransitive, rare, chiefly poetic or literary) To take on the yellow colour of amber.
  • ✤ Westward along Lancaster Avenue, among the stone walls and broad driveways of imposing old houses—their lawns dappled with the shade of ambering maples and dusty, bark-peeled sycamores—²³
  • ✤ [T]hough many of the pirates protested against these energetic activities[,] he was only pleasantly tired when the lowering, ambering sun began to bounce needles of gold glare off the waves ahead;²⁴

Etymology

From Middle English ambre, aumbre, from Old French aumbre, ambre, from Arabic عَنْبَر (ʕanbar, “ambergris”), from Middle Persian 𐭠𐭭𐭡𐭫 (ʾnbl/⁠ambar⁠/, “ambergris”). Compare English lamber, ambergris. Displaced Middle English smulting (from Old English smelting (“amber”)), Old English eolhsand (“amber”), Old English glær (“amber”), and Old English sāp (“amber, resin, pomade”).

• The nucleotide sequence “UAG” is named “amber” for the first person to isolate the amber mutation, California Institute of Technology graduate student Harris Bernstein, whose last name (“Bernstein”) is the German word for the resin “amber”.²⁵²⁶

Pronunciation

• (non-rhotic)
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈæm.bəː/, [ˈæm.bəː]
  • (Australia)
    • (without æ-raising) IPA: /ˈæm.bəː/, [ˈæm.bəː] ~ [ˈæm.bɐ̝ː]
    • (æ-raising) IPA: /ˈɛːm.bəː/, [ˈɛːm.bəː] ~ [ˈɛːm.bɐ̝ː]
      • Audio (Queensland): 🔊
• (rhotic)
  • (General American, Canada)
    • (without æ-raising) IPA: /ˈæm.bɚ/, [ˈæm.bɚ] ~ [ˈæm.bɹ̩]
    • (æ-raising) IPA: /ˈeə̯m.bɚ/, [ˈeə̯m.bɚ] ~ [ˈeə̯m.bɹ̩]; /ˈɛə̯m.bɚ/, [ˈɛə̯m.bɚ] ~ [ˈɛə̯m.bɹ̩]
      • Audio (California): 🔊
• Rhymes: -æmbə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: am‧ber

Printed 2026-09-19.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1526, The Grete Herball: ↩

2. 1579, The Booke of Simples, fol. 56 (contained in Bulleins Bulwarke of Defence against all Sicknesse, Soarnesse, and Woundes): ↩

3. 1600, John Pory (translator), A Geographical Historie of Africa (original by Leo Africanus), page 344: ↩

4. 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, letter, 18 Apr 1717: ↩

5. 1769, Firishta, translated by Alexander Dow, Tales translated from the Persian of Inatulla of Delhi, volume I, Dublin: P. and W. Wilson et al., page iv: ↩

6. c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]: ↩

7. c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]: ↩

8. 1637, Monro, his expedition with the Worthy Scots Regiment (called Mac-Keys Regiment), republished in 1999 →ISBN, page 102: ↩

9. 1888, Oscar Wilde, “The Nightingale and the Rose”, in The Happy Prince and Other Tales, London: Duckworth, published 1928, page 43: ↩

10. 2012 March, Lee A. Groat, “Gemstones”, in American Scientist ‎${}^{[2]}$, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 14 June 2012, page 128: ↩

11. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 1:4: ↩

12. 1974, Traffic Planning and Engineering, page 366: ↩

13. 2000, Traffic Engineering & Control, volume 41, page 201: ↩

14. 2004 January 14, AZGuy, “Turn Signal Research shows amber no more effective then red”, in rec.autos.driving (Usenet): ↩

15. 2007, Molecular Genetics of Bacteria, edition 3, page 333: ↩

16. 2007, Jonathan C. Kuhn, “Detection of Salmonella by Bacteriophage Felix 01”, in Salmonella: Methods and Protocols, pages 27–28: ↩

17. 1973, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Banking, Currency, and Housing, Hearings, Reports and Prints of the House Committee…, page 53: ↩

18. 2006, Jeffrey Archer, False Impression, page 270: ↩

19. 2008, Elizabeth Amber, Raine: The Lords of Satyr, page 211: ↩

20. 1885, America the Beautiful: ↩

21. 2007, Phil Rickman, Fabric of Sin: A Merrily Watkins Mystery: ↩

22. 2008, Jeri Westerson, Veil of Lies: A Medieval Noir: ↩

23. 2009, Jack Wennerstrom, Black Coffee, page 19: ↩

24. 2011, Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides: ↩

25. James F. Crow with William F. Dove (1995), “The Amber Mutants of Phage T4”, in Genetics ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume 141, number 2, →PMID, →PMCID, pages 439–442. ↩

26. Nicholas Wright Gillham (2011), Genes, Chromosomes, and Disease: From Simple Traits, to Complex Traits, to Personalized Medicine. ↩