What does corbeau mean?
Corbeau is the French word for a crow or raven, occasionally carried into English in literary, heraldic, or fashion contexts where a Gallic flourish is desired. As a borrowed term it functions much like 'beau' or 'tableau': a touch of French that lends elegance or precision to a sentence. Beyond ornithology, corbeau enjoys a second life as a color name denoting a deep, near-black shade shot through with blue-green — a hue favored in nineteenth-century textiles and still encountered in fabric and garment descriptions. The word descends from Latin 'corvus', meaning raven, which also gave English such relatives as 'corvine', 'corvid', and even 'corbel', the architectural bracket named for its supposed resemblance to a crow's beak. For readers and writers alike, corbeau offers a compact way to evoke the glossy darkness of the crow, whether describing the bird itself, its jet-black plumage, or any material dyed in that same lustrous gloom.
nounA crow or raven; the word is borrowed directly from French, where it is the ordinary term for these birds. It is also used as a color name for a deep blackish blue-green shade.
- A crow or raven (a borrowing of the French word for these birds).
- A very dark blackish shade of blue-green, chiefly used as a fabric or fashion color name.
"The tailor chose a suit of corbeau, its fabric shifting between black and deep green in the light."
"From the bare branch overhead, a single corbeau watched the ploughman's every move."
"She ordered the evening gown in corbeau, admiring how the dark green-black silk caught the candlelight."
The plural follows the French pattern, like 'beaux' or 'tableaux'; an anglicized plural 'corbeaus' is occasionally seen but less standard.
"At dusk, corbeaux gathered noisily over the harvested fields."
The humble corbel holding up your mantelpiece and the corbeau perched on a fence are cousins — both descend from Latin 'corvus', the raven.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of corbeau
Corbeau comes from Old French 'corbel'/'corbiau', a diminutive form derived from Latin 'corvus', meaning raven or crow. The same Latin root produced English 'corvine', 'corvid', and 'cormorant' (from 'corvus marinus', literally 'sea-raven'), and via medieval builders' fancy, 'corbel', whose bracket shape was likened to a crow's beak. The word entered English sporadically as a learned or fashionable borrowing rather than through everyday use, appearing chiefly in natural-history writing and later as a name for a dark greenish-black cloth color.
How corbeau is actually used
In English, 'corbeau' is rare and largely confined to two contexts: ornithological or literary references where the French term is retained for flavor, and textile/fashion descriptions, where it names a dark greenish-black shade popular especially in Victorian dress goods. In everyday speech English speakers would simply say 'crow' or 'raven'.
Easily confused with corbeau
A corbel is an architectural bracket supporting a projection, whereas a corbeau is a crow or raven; both derive from Latin 'corvus' but denote entirely different things.