نقره ای

What it means

نقره‌ای (noghreyi) means “silver,” the color and the metal both. A silver bracelet is noghreyi. A silver Mercedes parked outside a north-Tehran wedding is also noghreyi. The graying hair of a man in his fifties is moo-haye noghreyi. Same word, three contexts.

The structure is the standard Persian color pattern: نقره (noghre, silver, the metal) plus the suffix -ی (-i, “of that color”). The output is an adjective that can sit before or after the noun it modifies depending on whether you use ezafe construction.

How to use it

Noghreyi shows up in jewelry shops, car listings, hair descriptions, and metallic clothing. It is the cooler, more understated cousin of talayi. Where talayi shouts celebration, noghreyi whispers taste.

gardanband-e noghreyi kharidam.

I bought a silver necklace.

گردنبند نقره‌ای خریدم.

mashin-ash noghreyi ast.

His car is silver.

ماشینش نقره‌ای است.

moo-haye noghreyi dasht.

He had silver hair.

موهای نقره‌ای داشت.

The pattern again

Like talayi from tala, like khakestari from khakestar, noghreyi comes from noghre. Persian colors that name a material or a thing in nature almost always use this -i suffix. If you can name the source object, you can build the color word. This is one of the most predictable corners of Persian morphology.

Where it comes from

نقره (noghre, silver) is Arabic-origin (نُقْرَة, naqrah) and entered Persian centuries ago alongside the broader vocabulary of metals, coinage, and craftsmanship. The Pure Persian alternative سیم (sim) survives in compounds (simin, silver in poetry; sim-keshi, wire-pulling for electrical work) and in classical verse, but noghre is the everyday word for the metal and noghreyi the everyday word for the color.

In our voice

Noghreyi is the elegant restraint color. A bride wears talayi. Her aunt wears noghreyi. Both are correct, and the aunt usually has the better taste. The word also lives inside a few useful compounds: noghreyi-poosh (silver-clad) for someone dressed in silver, common in describing performers or older men in formal silvery suits; noghreyi-fam (silver-toned) for the literary modifier you see in product descriptions for paint, ceramics, and luxury goods. The everyday speaker rarely reaches for these compounds; the marketing copy does. But knowing they exist helps you read Iranian magazines and catalogs without stumbling on the embedded color logic.

References

• Dehkhoda, نقره‌ای
• Vajehyab, نقره‌ای