Multicolored means having many different colors. A rainbow is multicolored, displaying red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet all at once. A multicolored quilt might combine dozens of fabric patterns in blues, greens, reds, and yellows. Parrots are often multicolored birds, their feathers showing brilliant combinations of scarlet, emerald, sapphire, and gold.

You might also see it written as multi-colored with a hyphen, though both spellings are correct. Similar words include variegated (which emphasizes variety and irregular patterns) and polychromatic (a more scientific term meaning the same thing).

When something is multicolored, the colors usually appear together in distinct sections or patterns rather than blending into a single new shade. A multicolored beach ball has separate panels of different colors. A multicolored butterfly wing displays distinct patches and stripes. This is different from something that's simply mixed, like when you stir red and blue paint together to make purple.