# green

> English word · Noun · IPA /ɡɹiːn/ · frequency rank #771

## Definitions
1. The color of grass and leaves; a primary additive color midway between yellow and blue which is evoked by light between roughly 495–570 nm.
2. A member of a green party; an environmentalist.
3. A putting green, the part of a golf course near the hole.
4. The surface upon which bowls is played.
5. One of the color balls used in snooker, with a value of 3 points.
6. A public patch of land in the middle of a settlement.
7. A grassy plain; a piece of ground covered with verdant herbage.
8. Fresh leaves or branches of trees or other plants; wreaths.
9. Any substance or pigment of a green color.
10. A green light used as a signal.
11. Marijuana.
12. Money.
13. One of the three color charges for quarks.
14. Ellipsis of green room.

## Etymology
Etymology tree
Proto-Germanic *grōniz
Proto-West Germanic *-ī
Proto-West Germanic *grōnī
Old English grēne
Middle English grene
English green
From Middle English grene, from Old English grēne, from Proto-West Germanic *grōnī, from Proto-Germanic *grōniz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰreh₁- (“to grow”). More at grow. Doublet of Gruen.
See also North Frisian green, West Frisian grien, Dutch groen, Low German grön, green, greun, German grün, Danish and Norwegian Nynorsk grøn, Swedish grön, Norwegian Bokmål grønn, Icelandic grænn.
The sense of obscene, pornographic, or sexual in the Philippines is a semantic loan from Spanish verde. In other varieties of English, blue is the color instead associated with obscenity or pornography.

## Easily confused with
- **grew** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-grew)
- **grey** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-grey)
- **Greg** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greg)
- **grin** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-grin)
- **Gwen** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-gwen)
- **grown** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-grown)
- **grief** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-grief)
- **greet** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greet)
- **Gregg** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-gregg)
- **groin** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-groin)
- **Greta** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greta)
- **groan** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-groan)
- **greys** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greys)
- **greens** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greens)
- **Greene** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greene)
- **greets** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greets)
- **greener** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/green-vs-greener)
- **gee** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/gee-vs-green)
- **GRE** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/gre-vs-green)
- **glen** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/glen-vs-green)

## Common misspellings (7)
`geren`, `ggreen`, `greenn`, `gren`, `grene`, `grreen`, `rgeen`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/green