crayon
Synonym discussion
Sense: noun/1
All four are everyday tools for adding colour to paper, but each has a distinct feel. A crayon is a short stick of coloured wax — children's go-to tool, smooth and slightly waxy on the page, and not sharpenable. A coloured pencil has a wooden body around a coloured lead; it sharpens like a normal pencil and produces finer, more controlled lines, so older children and adults often prefer it. A marker uses liquid ink that soaks into the paper and gives bright, even coverage, but it can bleed through to the next page. Chalk is dusty and works best on blackboards or rough surfaces rather than paper. For example, a five-year-old will reach for crayons to fill in a colouring book, while a design student might pick coloured pencils to shade a building plan.
Common collocations
Nouns
- box of crayons
- tub of crayons
- wax crayon
- crayon drawing
- crayon mark
Phrases
- draw with crayons
- colour with crayons
Prepositions
- with a crayon
- in crayon
Etymology
Borrowed into English in the late seventeenth century from French 'crayon', meaning pencil or chalk pencil. The French word comes from 'craie' (chalk), which itself goes back to Latin 'creta', a kind of white clay or chalk. English first used the word for chalk drawing tools, and only later did it settle on the modern meaning of a coloured wax stick used mainly by children.