colour wheel

See also: color wheel

English

A simple colour wheel with primary, secondary and tertiary colours represented.

Alternative forms

• color wheel (American spelling)

Noun

colour wheel (plural colour wheels)

1. (British spelling) A planar circular chart in which related colours are adjacent, and complementary colors are opposite.
2. A device that emits varying colours of light by the use of a wheel, commonly used to illuminate Christmas trees.
   • 2013, Martin Pullen, The Completely Useless Guide to Christmas‎^[1]:

     With fears that draping normal Christmas fairy lights through the tree's aluminium branches would cause a short circuit, the trees were lit from below by a rotating colour wheel divided into wedge-shaped segments of variously coloured plastic.

   • 2013, Robert Jeschonek, Christmas at Glosser's‎^[2], page 13:

     The twins led him across the room to a silver aluminum Christmas tree in the far corner. A device on the floor cast light on the tree from a bulb behind a slowly turning color wheel.

Translations

a circular colour chart where related colours are adjacent and complementary colours opposite.

• Esperanto: kolorcirklo
• German: Farbkreis m, Farbrad n
• Maori: taeāwhio
• Spanish: rueda del color f

See also

• colour triangle