Word family noun colour/color colouring/coloring coloration colourant/colorant colourist/colorist adjective coloured/colored discoloured/discolored colourful/colorful ≠ colourless/colorless multicoloured colour/color verb colour/color adverb colourfully/colorfully ≠ colourlessly/colorlessly
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcolourfulcol‧our‧ful British English, colorful American English /ˈkʌləfəl $ -lər-/ ●●○ adjective 1 COLOUR/COLORhaving bright colours or a lot of different colours a colourful display of flowers colorful costumes► see thesaurus at colour2 INTERESTINGinteresting, exciting, and full of varietycolourful history/past/career/life Charlie Chaplin had a long and colorful career.colourful character/figure (=someone who is interesting and unusual)3 SWEARcolourful language, speech etc uses a lot of swearing —colourfully adverbExamples from the Corpus
colourful• Comfortable, colourful and cluttered, everything in the house was used and enjoyed by the Berkeleys, their family and friends.• Throughout his life, O'Connor was a colourful and controversial character.• The garden was full of colourful and fascinating flowers.• In summer the gardens would have looked colourful and pretty but somehow in the depths of the Provençal winter they appeared melancholy.• The Secrets of Santa is a magical, colourful book which all Brownies will love reading again and again.• Riva is a welcoming town with a colourful history.• This month, you look set to be especially colourful if not spectacularly successful.• Coleman's colourful life is recorded in his autobiography Reflections of a Racing Driver.• Except in the colourful person of the legendary John Winchcombe, the Berkshire woollen industry had little in the way of glamour.• The marina is a colourful sight and has shops and restaurants.• That's a really colourful tie you're wearing.• Textured seats and colourful woven floor matting add to the hot tropical ambiance.colourful character/figure• Mozart's librettist for Figaro was himself a controversial and colourful character.• The most colourful character amongst these was William Riley, who had a varied and successful operational career.• The result has all the colourful character of other hand dragged kitchens, but with a very real and visible bonus.• These fish have provided me with a tank full of hardy, clever, colourful characters that are easy to care. 