yellow [OE] As with other colour words such as *auburn and *brown, the root of yellow probably referred to a wider range of colours than the modern word. It shares an ancestor with gold (see golden), but is also related to gall [OE], bile [M17th], and the final element of *melancholy, all of which derive from the greenish colour of bile. The yellow egg yolk [OE], which could be spelt yelk into the 17th century, was also related to yellow. From the 14th century yellow rather than *green could be the colour of jealousy, possibly with the idea of a jealous person being ‘jaundiced’ or bitter. The word jaundice [ME] is from Old French jaune ‘yellow’, from the symptomatic yellowish complexion. Yellow is now associated with cowardice, a link that began in the 1850s in the USA. Since the 1900s a coward has been said to be yellow-bellied or a yellow-belly, although it had been used to mean ‘contemptible’ since the mid 19th century.