cyan

Everyday

1. Cyan is a bright greenish-blue colour, like a clear tropical sea. tree →
2. (science, printing) Cyan is one of the main colours of printer ink, together with magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). tree →

In the lessons

In art and computing lessons cyan appears in colour mixing: in light, green + blue light make cyan; in printing, cyan ink absorbs red light. Printers often need a new cyan cartridge. It tells the reader an exact shade of blue-green. Related colours: turquoise, aqua, teal.

Examples

• The printer has run out of cyan ink. tree →
• Cyan is a mix of blue and green light. tree →
• She painted the sky cyan in her picture. tree →
• The swimming pool water looked cyan in the sun. tree →
• CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. tree →
• On the screen, cyan and red together make white light. tree →
• The cyan text was hard to read on the white page. tree →

Note

Pronounced «SY-an». Uncountable when it is a colour name. Cyan is very close to «aqua» and «turquoise»; in screen colours, cyan and aqua are the same. In printing, CMY are the subtractive primary colours; in light, RGB (red, green, blue) are the additive primary colours, and cyan is the opposite of red.