sallow

Etymology 1

From Middle English salowe, from Old English salu, from Proto-West Germanic *salu, from Proto-Germanic *salwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *solH. See also Dutch zaluw, dialectal German sal; also Irish salach (“dirty”), Welsh halog, Latin salīva, Russian соло́вый (solóvyj, “cream-colored”).

adj

1. (of skin) Yellowish.
   1. (most regions, of light skin) Of a sickly pale colour.
      […] were it not that his Complexion is sallow, and that he is something short of a Leg, and Blind of one Eye, he would positively be the most lovely of all the human Species. 1770, Henry Brooke, The Fool of Quality, volume 5, Dublin, page 162
      […] there was something owl-like about the eyes, round which there was a sallow, hollow depression. 1937, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1880, in The Years, New York: Harcourt, Brace, page 64
   2. (Ireland) Of a tan colour, associated with people from southern Europe or East Asia.
      The girls are mostly Slavic-pretty, long-limbed with high cheekbones, sallow skin and green eyes. They are the closest thing to supermodels that Mulhuddart has ever seen. 23 December 2007, David McWilliams, We must begin the culture debate
      A yellow undertone is often found on people with sallow skin – e.g. Asian. 2012, Aisling, "Am I pink or yellow? How to choose the right foundation tone. And what is the deal with Mac foundations?" beaut.ie (17 January)
      She had such lovely sallow skin, the handsome high cheekbones of the north with the brown conker-colour eyes and the dark silken hair. 13 June 2012, Billy Keane, “I feel so much for Mickey. Maybe there is peace for him in sport”, in Irish Independent
2. (of a person) Having skin (especially on the face) of a sickly pale colour.
   She put her hand on the arm of her careworn, sallow father, and frothing her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal red carpet. 1920, D. H. Lawrence, chapter 1, in Women in Love, New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, published 1996, page 14
   In a matter of hours she was looking gaunt, and sallow: her face had a kind of negative color. 1982, Saul Bellow, chapter 2, in The Dean’s December, New York: Pocket Books, published 1983, page 20
3. (of objects or dim light) Having a similar pale, yellowish colour.
   On the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape […] 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Velay”, in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, Boston: Roberts Brothers, page 48
   In a restaurant window little meringue cases, not quite sallow and not quite white. 1992, Edna O’Brien, Time and Tide, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Part 4, Chapter 44, p. 319
   Now a sallow night-light glowed from the table and heaped large shadows on the beds and up the walls. 2011, Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child, New York: Knopf, Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 169
4. Foul; murky; sickly.
   Mr. President, the sallow air of our cities, the blackened sands of our seashores, our lakes and harbors reeking of sewage and depleted of oxygen are but a part of the sad legacy of the idea that nature can be treated as a servant, blindly obedient to every want, whim or pleasure of man. 1972, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation, Predatory Mammals and Endangered Species, page 559
   The boat's deck was covered in moss, and its warm, sallow water was filled with lichens that gave off an eerie green glow. 2011, Jacob Murphy, Guardians, page 44
   My mouth went dry and a sallow feeling descended upon me. 2012, Dr. James Kennedy, The Baywood Tales, page 17
   The burden of a hollow and sallow feeling that was suffocating my soul as a learner had given way at this time to a joyous feeling of anticipation; 2013, Dr. John H. LaManque, A Bricklayer's Story, page 130
   This ugliness, though, filled the air now. With something rank and squalid and seemingly spent with the character of death. No, it wasn't that I was scared, being all alone now out on my property. In my house. It was this surrounding sallow atmosphere now which depressed me. This deep sense of some deep basic wrong occupying my surrounding world. 2016, Paul Quintanilla, Master Tom

verb

1. (intransitive) To become sallow.
   The tan of his sunburnt face and hands contrasted sadly with the sallowing skin of the girl-wife, who, despite his care, was sinking under her task of son-bearing. 1912, Flora Annie Steel, King-Errant, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, Book 2, Chapter 6, p. 212
   I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase And watched each petal sallowing . . . 1918, Lola Ridge, “The Garden”, in The Ghetto and Other Poems, New York: Huebsch, page 93
   My maiden reviews, once the verbal equivalent of murder, are now a brief, compact pile, almost as old as I. They fall apart sallowing, their stiff pages chip like dry leaves flying the tree that fed them. 1977, Robert Lowell, “Death of a Critic”, in Day by Day, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 48
2. (transitive) To cause (someone or something) to become sallow.
   1835, Fanny Kemble (as Frances Anne Butler), Journal, London: John Murray, Volume 1, entry for 15 September, 1832, p. 105, footnote, The climate of this country is the scape-goat upon which all ill looks and ill health of the ladies is laid; but while they are brought up as effeminately as they are, take as little exercise, live in rooms like ovens during the winter, and marry as early as they do, it will appear evident that many causes combine with an extremely variable climate, to sallow their complexions, and destroy their constitutions.
   But would a pretender carry his or her cunning to the extreme of fortifying the manuscript in every possible way against the sallowing touch of time[…]? 1889, George Washington Cable, “How I Got them”, in Strange True Stories of Louisiana, New York: Scribner, page 10
   Mary Gowd, with her frumpy English hat and her dreadful English fringe, and her brick-red English cheeks, which not even the enervating Italian sun, the years of bad Italian food or the damp and dim little Roman room had been able to sallow. 1918, Edna Ferber, chapter 9, in Cheerful — By Request, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, page 252
   All she knew was that she had been stiffened and thickened by the same years that had given the other woman added grace and suppleness, that her skin had been dried and sallowed by the same lights and weathers that had added luster to the radiant beauty of the other […] 1940, Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, Garden City, NY: Sun Dial, published 1942, Book 2, Chapter 11, pp. 169-170

Etymology 2

table From Middle English salow, salwe, from Old English sealh, from Proto-West Germanic *salh, from Proto-Germanic *salhaz, masculine variant of *salhō, *salhijǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂lk-, *sh₂lik-. See also Low German Sal, Saal; Swedish sälg; also Welsh helyg, Latin salix, probably originally a borrowing from some other language.

noun

1. A European willow, Salix caprea, that has broad leaves, large catkins and tough wood.
   c. 1553, Humphrey Llwyd (translator), The Treasury of Healthe, London: William Coplande, Remedies, Chapter 44, I[f] a man eate the flowers of a sallow or wyllowe tree, or of a Poplet tree, they wyl make cold al the heate of carnall lust in hym.
   Now, everything irritated him: the two sallows, one all gold and perfume and murmur, one silver-green and bristly, reminded him, that here he had taught her about pollination. 1914, D. H. Lawrence, “The Shades of Spring”, in The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, London: Duckworth, page 158
2. A willow twig or branch.
   1564, William Bullein, A Dialogue Bothe Pleasaunte and Pietifull Wherein Is a Goodly Regimente against the Feuer Pestilence with a Consolacion and Comfort against Death, London: John Kingston, [p. 22b], […] set Sallowes about the bedde, besprinkled with vineger and rose water.
   1767, Francis Fawkes (translator), The Idylliums of Theocritus, London, for the author, Idyllium 16, p. 156, For lo! their spears the Syracusians wield, And bend the pliant sallow to a shield:
   He stuck a number of sallows in a circle, at equal distances, in the grass; the circle was the size which he wished the basket to be. He then began to weave other sallows between these, in a manner which Frank easily learned to imitate […] 1822, Maria Edgeworth, Frank: A Sequel to Frank in Early Lessons, volume I, Cambridge, page 111
   The sallow knows the basketmaker’s thumb; The oar, the guide’s. 1867, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Adirondacs”, in May-Day, and Other Pieces, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, page 49