In literature, “dingy yellow” is employed as a color that immediately evokes a sense of faded, weary, or decayed beauty. Authors use it to describe natural objects—with animals, fruit, and flowers taking on this muted hue to suggest aging or loss of vibrancy [1, 2, 3]—as well as man-made objects and settings, such as worn stucco walls, dilapidated interiors, or even a pretentious building façade struggling to impersonate grandeur [4, 5, 6]. The phrase also appears in more dynamic, atmospheric moments, like the transformation of surfaces under changing light or in moments of sudden shock in a character, thereby enriching the narrative mood with an aura of neglect and time-worn melancholy [7, 8, 9]. Overall, “dingy yellow” functions in these texts as a versatile descriptor that conjures images of stagnation, decay, or the persistent passage of time.
- The latter is smaller, of a dingy yellow color, and bears the generic name of prairie wolf.
— from Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River, in 1820
Resumed and Completed, by the Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake, in 1832 by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
- Fruit large, of a dingy yellow color; freestone; ripens in August.
— from The Peaches of New York by U. P. Hedrick
- The flowers, which are of a dingy yellow colour, appear in pendant spikes.
— from Useful Knowledge: Volume 2. Vegetables
Or, a familiar account of the various productions of nature by William Bingley
- No. 38 was a pretentious house, a tenement building trying to look like a palace, and it was plastered over with dingy yellow stucco.
— from Olive in Italy by Moray Dalton
- A half mile away, outlined sombrely against the dusky evening blue, rose a huddle of dingy yellow walls.
— from The Long Lane's Turning by Hallie Erminie Rives
- Then it was a dingy yellow, with faded green blinds; and now the same forlorn attempt at coloring greeted all passers-by.
— from The Pansy, November 1886, Vol. 14 by Various
- [17] Laura went into the recess of a bay-window and opened the dingy yellow envelope and read as follows: " Lytton Lodge , April —, 18—. "
— from Victor's Triumph
Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
- All morning long the sun had shone through the choking fog as the candle-flame through the dingy yellow horn of an old stable-lantern.
— from Master Skylark: A Story of Shakspere's Time by John Bennett
- He dropped his glass and his jaw at the same time, turned a dingy yellow colour, and cast a terrified glance round the four corners of the room.
— from The Indian Bangle by Fergus Hume