amber means of a brownish yellow colour, like that of most amber.
amber is pronounced /ˈæm.bəː/.
Why “amber” is a great word
A hard, generally yellow to brown translucent fossil resin from extinct coniferous trees, used for jewelry and decoration. From Middle English ambre, aumbre, from Old French aumbre, ambre, from Arabic عَنْبَر (ʕanbar, "ambergris"), from Middle Persian 𐭠𐭭𐭡𐭫 (ʾnbl /ambar/, "ambergris"); the nucleotide sequence 'UAG' was named 'amber' in the 1960s for Harris Bernstein, whose surname means 'amber' in German. Unlike "ambergris" (a waxy, ocean-tossed secretion of sperm whales) or "resin" (the sticky, living sweat of pine and fir), amber is time made solid—resin buried, transformed, and unearthed after epochs. It is the golden prison of a prehistoric insect, the warm weight of a bead against the throat, and the slow light held within a forgotten sun—solidified time you can hold in your hand, proving that endurance is only another form of surrender.
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".
adj
- Of a brownish yellow colour, like that of most amber.e.g.“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.”
noun
- Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.e.g.“Ambre is hote and drye […] Some say that it is the sparme of a whale.”
- Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.; Formerly thought to be the product of a plant.
- 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.e.g.“With scarfs and fans and double change of bravery,
With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery.”
- A yellow-orange colour.
- 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.e.g.“While earlier controllers provided concurrent ambers, present practice is to indicate a minimum intergreen period of 4 s.”
- The stop codon (nucleotide triplet) "UAG", or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.e.g.“an amber codon, an amber mutation, an amber suppressor”
- Hesitance to proceed, or limited approval to proceed; an amber light.e.g.“[…] in response to the actions I just described, business was given the green light, and now we seem to be on amber.”
verb
- To perfume or flavour with ambergris.e.g.“ambered wine, an ambered room”
- To preserve in amber.e.g.“an ambered fly”
- To cause to take on the yellow colour of amber.e.g.“For purple mountains majesty; for amber waves of grain.”
- To take on the yellow colour of amber.e.g.“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—”
name
- A female given name from English, popular in the 1980s and the 1990s.e.g.“The youngest daughter of the Marchioness of Summerdown had one of these quaint, pretty names - Amber! - and what a pretty creature she was!”
- A surname of uncertain origin.e.g.“Amber, the half, generally waltzed round our forwards, and when he secured he passed the ball on to Aspinall.”
- A male given name from Hindi.
- A city in Rajasthan, India, also known as Amer.
- A river in Derbyshire, England, which joins the River Derwent at Ambergate.
- Synonym of Ambel (“language”).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- ambergris 86% match — A solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull gray to blackish color, formed within the intestines of the sperm whale and used in the production of perfumes. vs amber →
- electrum 82% match — Amber. vs amber →
- enamber 80% match — To preserve in, or as if in, amber. vs amber →
- myrrh 79% match — A red-brown resinous material, the dried sap of a tree of the genus Commiphora, especially Commiphora myrrha, used as perfume, incense or medicine. vs amber →
- agarwood 78% match — Heartwood from trees of genus Aquilaria, especially Aquilaria malaccensis (syn. A. agallocha), infected with mold (Phialophora parasitica), which produce a protective aromatic resin in response to this infection. vs amber →
- balm 78% match — Any of various aromatic resins exuded from certain plants, especially trees of the genus Commiphora of Africa, Arabia and India and Myroxylon of South America. vs amber →
- olibanum 78% match — A gum resin from trees of the genus Boswellia, formerly used as a medicine and now mainly as incense. vs amber →
- smaragd 77% match — An emerald. vs amber →