beige [M19th] Beige was first used for a woollen fabric which was usually undyed and unbleached, and then used for things of a similar colour. The immediate source is French, but earlier details are unknown. The colour greige—halfway between beige and grey—has a similar history, coming via French grège ‘undyed silk’ from Itallian greggio ‘unprocessed, untreated’, of uncertain origin but perhaps from the Germanic source of *grey. Use as a colour term appears in the 1920s.