Definition of "sallow"

Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.

1891, Oscar Wilde, “chapter 2”, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London, New York, N.Y., Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co.

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

The terrible descriptions were so real and vivid, that the sallow pages seemed to turn red with gore […]

1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […]

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

Scenes like this — the sallow evening light, the old Indian cropping grass, the creak of the cartwheels, the streaming egrets — were more native to him than England.

1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 5”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers

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

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

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 vaseAnd watched each petal sallowing . .

1918, Lola Ridge, “The Garden”, in The Ghetto and Other Poems‎, New York: Huebsch, page 93

His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know about his face.

1920, John Galsworthy, “‘Here We are Again!’”, in In Chancery, London: William Heinemann, part II, page 225

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 pageschip like dry leavesflying the tree that fed them.

1977, Robert Lowell, “Death of a Critic”, in Day by Day‎, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 48

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.

1835, Fanny Kemble (as Frances Anne Butler), Journal, London: John Murray, Volume 1, entry for 15 September, 1832, p. 105, footnote

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

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.

c. 1553, Humphrey Llwyd (translator), The Treasury of Healthe, London: William Coplande, Remedies, Chapter 44

And fast beside a little brooke did pasOf muddie water, that like puddle stanke,By which few crooked sallowes grew in ranke:

1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, page 75

[…] it came into my Mind, That the Twigs of that Tree from whence I cut my Stakes that grew, might possibly be as tough as the Sallows, and Willows, and Osiers in England […]

1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], 3rd edition, London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], published 1719, pages 125-126

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows, borne aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; [...]

1819 September 19, John Keats, “To Autumn”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, stanza 3, page 139

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

Who-so that buildeth his hous al of salwes,And priketh his blinde hors over the falwes,And suffreth his wyf to go seken halwes,Is worthy to been hanged on the galwes!(please add an English translation of this quotation)

1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “(please specify the story)”, in The Canterbury Tales; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, lines 655-658

[…] set Sallowes about the bedde, besprinkled with vineger and rose water.

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]

For lo! their spears the Syracusians wield, / And bend the pliant sallow to a shield:

1767, Francis Fawkes (translator), The Idylliums of Theocritus, London, for the author, Idyllium 16, p. 156

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