rouge
UK[ruːʒ]US[ruːʒ]
n
A red powder or cream used for colouring the cheeks or lips.
v
To colour the cheeks or lips with rouge.
Etymology
The word 'rouge' entered English directly from French in the mid-18th century, where it simply means 'red'. Its ultimate origin is the Latin adjective 'rubeus', meaning 'reddish' or 'red'. This Latin term is derived from the verb 'rubere', 'to be red', which itself can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root h₁rewdʰ-, the prolific source for words relating to the colour red across many languages. The semantic journey is straightforward: from the general concept of redness in its ancient roots, the word specialized in French to denote a cosmetic, a meaning which English borrowed wholesale without morphological alteration.
Analysis
The word 'rouge' is a simplex loanword from French. It functions as a complete lexical unit in English.
Examples
She applied a light dusting of rouge to her cheeks before the performance.
In historical dramas, actors often rouge their cheeks heavily to appear vibrant under stage lights.
The vintage compact contained a small, circular pad of rouge.