Dictionary

rainbowy en · ADJ

Etymology

Etymology tree English rainbow Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English rainbowy From rainbow + -y.

Meanings

1. Resembling a rainbow.
   • 1828-1830, William Taylor, Historic Survey of German Poetry a misty glory, an intangible rainbowy lustre
   • He saw how it made the water have rainbowy speckles on it, that wink different colors as the water splashed and splodged. 2014, Larry Grogan, Trauma Town:
   • His shape was all human except the head and hands and feet; every bit of him was covered with fish-scales all rainbowy. 1927, Edward Lucas White, Lukundoo: And Other Stories, page 121:
2. (informal) Pertaining to a positively viewed diversity in gender and/or sexuality.
   • New Your City's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year (making it the oldest gay and lesbian bookstore in the world), has shied away from “rainbowy sideline items because there are so many stores around us selling those items," says owner Kim Brinster. 2007, The Publishers Weekly - Volume 254, Issues 19-26, page 28:
   • No matter, however, how rainbowy post-communist queer people imagine the West, as depicted in the films of West-bound queer migration analysed in this chapter, they cannot be exempt from the inevitable disappointment 2020, James S. Williams, Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema:
   • And if it were all fluid, if it were kind of rainbowy kinds of genders, who could oppress whom? 2005, Flora Veit-Wild, Dirk Naguschewski, Body, Sexuality, and Gender, page 66:

Forms