Colorant

Description

Any compound, such as a Dye or Pigment, that gives color or opacity to another material. Colorants may occur naturally in a material (colors in flowers), may be added as part of a mixture (pigments in paint) or may be applied to the surface (dyes on a fiber). Fluorescent materials and dyes may migrate whereas inorganic compounds usually do not.

• Examples of organic colorants (usually dyes) include natural products (carotenoids, flavanols, hydroxyanthraquinones, indigoids, phenoxazines) as well as many synthetics
• Examples of inorganic colorants (usually pigments) include cobalt diacetate, Cd, Cr and Pb compounds, zinc sulfide, Zinc oxide, iron oxide, Ultramarine, Titanium dioxide, Al and Cu metallic powders.

Synonyms and Related Terms

colorants (pl.); colourant (Br.); colorant (Fr.); colorante (Esp., It., Port.); coloring matter 

Resources and Citations

• Wikipedia: Colorant (Accessed June 2023)
• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993
• Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996
• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997
• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998
• Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000