Pastel - pastille

Do not confuse the two nouns pastel and pastille. They may be pronounced the same or differently, depending on the speaker; and though they share an etymology, they currently have different meanings.

• Pastel, which may be a noun or an adjective, is a painter's term. It connotes a particular medium for colour, most commonly nowadays, for lay people, used in a form of colouring pencil; but also available as crayons. A pastel may also mean a picture made with pastel medium.
  • Because the colour resulting from the use of pastel is often more subdued, or less vivid and bright, than the original colour medium, the adjective pastel is often used to mean 'of a pale or subdued colour, or shade'. From this meaning, 'a pastel' may also be a pale colour (or a tin of a pale-coloured paint, etc).

Pastel is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, whose vowel is like that in 'at' and 'lamb': 'PAST-ul', IPA: /ˈpæst ^əl/ - although some speakers realize it as 'pas-TELL', /pæst ˈɛl/ (erroneously, in AWE's view).

The word is a diminutive of pasta, the Italian equivalent of 'paste'.

• A pastille is a lozenge, or medicine in the form of a sweet.

Pastille is pronounced either similarly to 'pastel', or with the stress on the second syllable, whose vowel is the long '-i-', 'past-EEL', /pæst ˈiːl/.

• • Historically, a pastille was also an aromatic pellet for burning, to release fragrance, "esp[ecially] as a fumigator, deodorizer, or disinfectant." (OED).

Pastille is also a diminutive - of panis ('bread', in Latin): 'a little roll of bread which could contain medicine, or breath fresheners etc. Early writers on etymology thought that pastille, like pastel, derived from pasta, but they were probably mistaken. The mistake is more likely to derive from the aromatic pellets, which were formed from a paste.

You may also want to see AWE's articles about similar confusions at Apostle - epistle and Pistil - pistol