brown
Brown meaning: a colour like chocolate or coffee; the five-letter word scores 10 Scrabble points and has seven one-letter neighbours.
Noun 4 meanings
A colour like that of chocolate or coffee.
“The browns and greens in this painting give it a nice woodsy feel.”
One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of 4 points.
Black tar heroin.
A brown horse or other animal.
Adjective 3 meanings
Having a brown color/colour.
Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin.
Not green (environmentally irresponsible); anti-green (against environmental protection).
“Near-synonyms: nongreen, antigreen”
Verb 4 meanings
To become brown.
“Fry the onions until they brown.”
Synonym of poop (“to defecate”).
“I've just browned myself.”
To cook something until it becomes brown.
To tan.
“Light-skinned people tend to brown when exposed to the sun.”
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English broun, from Old English brūn (“brown; dark; dusky”), from Proto-West Germanic *brūn, from Proto-Germanic *brūnaz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH-. Doublet of bruin.
Similar and opposite words
Brown is a familiar five-letter word that names a colour, a brown animal and a ball in snooker. In word games, brown is accepted in Collins, NWL2023, and ENABLE; it is both a Wordle answer and an allowed guess. Its Scrabble total is 10 points, with the W doing most of the scoring work.
Brown meaning, score, and word facts
- Brown is a five-letter entry accepted in Collins, NWL2023, and ENABLE.
- Brown names a colour and can also refer to a brown animal.
- Brown scores 10 Scrabble points: B is 3, W is 4, and R, O, and N are 1 each.
- Seven one-letter neighbours include GROWN, CROWN, DROWN, and FROWN.
- Brown is both a Wordle answer and an allowed guess.
What does brown mean?
Brown means a colour like chocolate or coffee. As an adjective, it describes something with that colour; as a noun, it can name a brown horse or another brown animal.
The definition also includes the brown ball in snooker, worth 4 points. That game-specific sense is easy to miss if you know brown only as a colour, but it is a standard dictionary meaning.
Brown is common rather than obscure: its frequency count is 30,395 and its frequency rank is 1,004. Those figures fit the everyday colour word, not a specialist spelling.
How does brown score and fit word games?
Brown earns 10 Scrabble points before board bonuses. B contributes 3, W contributes 4, and R, O, and N contribute 1 apiece, so the W supplies most of the value. A premium letter square on W changes the total more than one on any of the three one-point tiles.
Seven one-letter changes produce GROWN, CROWN, BLOWN, DROWN, BROWS, FROWN, and BRAWN. Several keep the -ROWN ending, while BROWS and BRAWN change the final pattern.
Brown has no anagrams in the word-game lists, despite using five distinct letters. For sound matches, its rhymes include DOWN, TOWN, SHOWN, and CROWN; the complete set contains 12 words.
Brown is both an accepted Wordle answer and an allowed guess. That makes it eligible in Wordle play, but not automatically a strong opener; its Scrabble value comes from W, not from a claim about letter-frequency strategy.
Rhymes with brown
All rhymesOne letter away
Questions people ask
Is brown a valid Scrabble word?
What words are one letter away from brown?
Does brown have any anagrams?
Keep going
Related lists
Looking for a different word?
Type the letters you have and the Finder shows every word that fits.