color vs stain

color

noun
  • Any of the standard dark tinctures used in a coat of arms, including azure, gules, sable, and vert. 

  • The flag of a nation or team. 

  • These hues as used in color television or films, color photographs, etc (as opposed to the shades of grey used in black-and-white television). 

  • A paint. 

  • An award for sporting achievement, particularly within a school or university. 

  • The morning ceremony of raising the flag. 

  • A property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which they can exchange by passing gluons; color charge. 

  • The spectral composition of visible light. 

  • A standard or banner. 

  • A front or facade; an ostensible truth actually false; pretext. 

  • Human skin tone, especially as an indicator of race or ethnicity. 

  • Skin color, noted as normal, jaundiced, cyanotic, flush, mottled, pale, or ashen as part of the skin signs assessment. 

  • Gang insignia. 

  • Hue as opposed to achromatic colors (black, white and grays). 

  • A third-order measure of derivative price sensitivity, expressed as the rate of change of gamma with respect to time, or equivalently the rate of change of charm with respect to changes in the underlying asset price. 

  • The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia) 

  • A flushed appearance of blood in the face; redness of complexion. 

  • Any of the colored balls excluding the reds. 

  • An appearance of right or authority; color of law. 

  • A particular set of visible spectral compositions, perceived or named as a class. 

  • Richness of expression; detail or flavour that is likely to generate interest or enjoyment. 

verb
  • To apply colors to the areas within the boundaries of a line drawing using colored markers or crayons. 

  • To attribute a quality to; to portray (as). 

  • To assign colors to the vertices of a graph (or the regions of a map) so that no two vertices connected by an edge (regions sharing a border) have the same color. 

  • To give something color. 

  • To cause (a pipe, especially a meerschaum) to take on a brown or black color, by smoking. 

  • To become red through increased blood flow. 

  • To affect without completely changing. 

adj
  • Conveying color, as opposed to shades of gray. 

stain

noun
  • Any of a number of non-standard tinctures used in modern heraldry. 

  • A reagent or dye used to stain microscope specimens so as to make some structures visible. 

  • A discoloured spot or area. 

  • A blemish on one's character or reputation. 

  • A substance used to soak into a surface and colour it. 

verb
  • To cause to seem inferior or soiled by comparison. 

  • To coat a surface with a stain 

  • To treat (a microscopic specimen) with a dye, especially one that dyes specific features 

  • To taint or tarnish someone's character or reputation 

  • To discolour. 

  • To become stained; to take a stain. 

How often have the words color and stain occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )