chartreuse
/ʃɑːrˈtruːz/noun, adjective
A herbal liqueur or pale yellow-green color
From French, from Medieval Latin chartreuse (A Carthusian monastery).
Lineage
The story
Picture the French Alps: steep, cold mountains sheltering La Grande-Chartreuse, the monastery that gave this word its name. The Carthusian monks developed their herbal liqueur’s recipe in the early 1600s, though the drink did not become known in English as chartreuse until 1866. Then, in 1884, English speakers borrowed the name again for the liqueur’s striking apple-green shade—a color poised between green leaves and yellow light. The word’s close English doublet, charterhouse, preserves the same monastic connection: one name became a drink, the other a building, while chartreuse became both a bottle and a color.
Modern usage
A highly attractive person or anything exceptionally impressive, according to a user-generated slang entry
- Heard in
- internet slang
Words from the same roots
chartreuse · French, from Medieval Latin, ‘A Carthusian monastery; later its liqueur and color’
DerivedCarthusian, charterhouse, liqueur, cordial, green, yellow
Sources
- Etymonlinechartreuse, green, yellow, awake, genre
- Urban Dictionarychartreuse
- Wiktionarychartreuse