crayon
/ˈkreɪən
/noun
A pencil or stick of coloured chalk or wax, used for drawing: a red crayon [as modifier]: crayon drawings...
- Rosa took her seat and set before her the tools of her trade; coloured pencils, crayons, pens, all carefully labeled in Braille.
- The children experimented with pencil drawings and water colour crayons.
- The drawings on view employ a variety of media, including ink, crayon, pencil, watercolor and gouache.
verb [with object]
Draw with a crayon or crayons: Will crayoned a picture on a legal pad [no object]: a child crayoning in a colouring book...
- The kid has bandaged two toy cats and two toy horses, all on the left foreleg, and crayoned an X-ray.
- When I was very young I crayoned a big ‘No Smoking’ sign and stuck it in our front window just before the arrival of a chain-smoking neighbour.
- New this year in the Poultry Marquee is a children's area where they can draw, paint or crayon their favourite birds in the show.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from French, from craie 'chalk', from Latin creta.
Crayon was adopted from French, from craie ‘chalk’, Latin creta, source also of the late 17th century word cretaceous, mainly used to describe the geological period when chalk was laid down.