I don't know what color pink used to be, but I'm hoping your source can answer my previously posed question of why we have a special word to describe pastel red?
There is a group of flowers known as xxx pink (xxx = e.g., swamp, mullein, clove, etc.) the colors of which seem to center vaguely around the color we now know as pink. Have to run an OED to find out which way that went.
AHD lists the origin of the word pink in the context of color or flowers as Unknown. The other pink comes from the Latin pingere.
Um… technically speaking (which technician?), pink is not a whiter shade of red. In printing, and in art, pink is treated as a special colour in its own right, whereas 'light' red, is usually referred to as a screen (0% to 100% - some of you will be able to recreate this in the 'special colours' section in your computer's graphics area) of red. Similarly, grey is not necessarily the same as a screen of black, though in the four colour printing process (using cyan, magenta, yellow and black), a screen of black stands in for grey as a screen of red (with a dash of blue) stands in for pink. For authenticity, however, you might add a fifth colour to your printing (adding cost as well), such as 'special pink' (also available as a poster paint colour, and it stinks like something it would be obscene and inappropriate to characterise on this board).
This, convolutedly, is the reason why we don't say 'light black' or 'light red' - they are conventionally treated in art as separate colours in their own right - and you will not be able to mix up a convincing pink with just red and white - at least some blue will be involved. And no, that doesn't make it 'merely' light purple either.
Actually, the issue of colour cropped up in a thread some months ago, and tsuwm the magnificent linked us to an absolutely marvellous site that told yu more about colour than your were ever minded to know. If you try a search on color, spectrum, or color wheel, you might find the thread.
And Jo, was it called 'rose' like the French? Or 'madder'? (Or is that redundant?)
I looked "pink" up to try to make a jest about it being the color on a white shirt after being tinted by a rapier stained with hemoglobin. The etymology suggests this was the original meaning .I was surprised to find that foxhunters' colors were called pink. But the first definition referred to the flower so well known.
I was going to make a note about the foxhunter's coat, which is actually scarlet, but Bill beat me to it. I have heard that the reason it's called 'pink' is because that was the name of the tailor who first made one. Can anyone verify or correct this?
While we're on this red-color binge/tinge, I take the opportunity to lament the contemporary ignorance of the common shades of red. Few people nowadays know the difference between scarlet and crimson, or are even aware that there is a difference.
And that leads me to a rant on the blue colors. It seems that no one anymore knows that there is a color called violet, which is not the same as purple. At least 95% of the time, when people say/write 'purple' they really mean 'violet' or some shade of violet, like lavender or lilac.
>I was going to make a note about the foxhunter's coat, which is actually scarlet, but Bill beat me to it. I have heard that the reason it's called 'pink' is because that was the name of the tailor who first made one. Can anyone verify or correct this?
Not I, but I find it interesting that you bring up tailoring... this whole thread got me started on the possible link between pink the color and pink the verb, denoting the zig-zag cuts made by tailors' pinking shears ~
And that leads me to a rant on the blue colors. It seems that no one anymore knows that there is a color called violet, which is not the same as purple. At least 95% of the time, when people say/write 'purple' they really mean 'violet' or some shade of violet, like lavender or lilac
I think part of it is because names for colors aren't as nailed down as we'd like to think. If you go hunting for art supplies, you'll find out that truth rather quickly. Heck, go try and buy a can of house paint!
Every child that goes to school has classes in the reading and writing of a language, but not nearly so many take classes that go into the classification and composition of color. Even then, it's a confused subject. It's why any smart artist has a look at a proof of a print, before it goes into production, because your idea of "cobalt blue", and the printer's idea of "cobalt blue" isn't necessarily the same. Right and wrong doesn't come into it.
I could rant a good while on art and colors, but I think I'll spare the people reading this thread, this time.
I checked my books for "pink", but in art they have more to say about how to make colors, than why they're called that.
I've mailed them for more information as I can't find anything on the net about it. Here is a reply from a website that I discovered:
Hi Jo, You are right, Old Holland still has some pinks that are yellow, PR101- synthetic iron oxide, Italian Brown Pink Lake. They are not opaque yellows. I think "pink" meant duel-toned, changing color when a clear medium is used to lighten the basic color. Don
I heard Pink and Pinks (even if they were yellow) got there name from their "pinked" edges-- so Fibrebabe was on the right track--
Pinks had pinked edges-- a kind of zig zag or saw toothed edge.. and gave there name to the color. Pinking shears are named because they too, create a pinked edge-- This was a word i remember looking up as a child-- i wondered why "Pinking shears" where pinking shears.. what was pinking? I wasn't sure if Pink the color and pinking were releated-- and didn't know pinks as flower at all! (but now it have them in my garden! -- easy to grow short lived perennial!)
I believe pinking shears are from an unrelated verb, meaning prick or pick (holes in...).
There is an old tailory firm in London called Thomas (?) Pink, but another idea I've heard is that only the Sovereign was allowed to use red (= "scarlet") livery, so others had to use a different colour. (We're talking heraldic colours here, where there are no fine distinctions.) But I can't vouch for either of these.
Before the flower "pink" came to be used to describe colours, pink things were probably called red, in fact. Languages vary in how many basic colour terms they have, and English is exceptional in having (about) eleven. Most have less.
The smallest number of basic colour terms is two (warm/dark vs cool/light). Some languages have three, with red as the third term. Then blue/green is the fourth. A language that has six colour terms almost certainly has black, white, red, yellow, green, and blue.
Beyond that, it varies. We have grey, brown, purple, pink, and orange, for a total of eleven. At least, Roget's use those eleven. Many English-speakers would agree they have those eleven. But it does vary a bit from person to person. Some would say purple was a kind of blue, orange was a kind of yellow or red.
By "basic" I mean a set of shades. If you own a scarlet car, you own a red car. If you own an ultramarine or cerulean pencil, you own a blue one. (Here's the answer to another post here: purple is the generic term covering mauve, lavender, and violet, as well as being a specific shade in contrast to violet or mauve.)
Historically you can see the expansion of the English colour system. In Old English there were the six most fundamental colour terms, plus grey and brown. Then came purple (originally = crimson, the dye from the porphyry or murex), and pink from the flower, and orange from the fruit. These have became basic terms in modern English, so for most people, if something is pink, it isn't red. (Ignore borderline cases: think of the pinkest pink and the reddest red. It's been demonstrated across languages that's its focal shades, not borders, that are important for colour naming.)
This usage is influencing other languages. The European equivalents rose, orange etc are increasingly used as distinct colour names rather than shade names.
I should think women would go nuts trying to keep track of meaning of names for colors that clothing designers keep coining and changing. It took me a while to find out what beige meant originaly - the color of undyed wool.
I should think women would go nuts trying to keep track of meaning of names for colors that clothing designers keep coining and changing.
No kidding. One year's "avacado" is "misty fern" the next. If only it stuck to clothing, though. One particular color in art supplies that drives me nuts is "indian red". It changed to "tuscan red", then "terra cotta". I have to bring left overs of whatever color I need to replenish, just to be sure I'm getting something close.
Car colors can get wierd too (along with the car names). I'm sure there are plenty of other examples for other products as well. I blame marketing "experts".
I dunno-- I am tone deaf-- i mean really bad-- but colors for me each color is pure and sings to me. I can track colors mentally-- many "colors" change depending on the light source-- incandesant/ floresent/natural daylight. but its not a problem for me.
It is one of the few characteristics that my mother really valued in me as a child. She was a seamstress and workded at home. she frequently sent me for buttons, thread and bindings and rarely questioned my matches. even when i brought home what looked to be a brown thread for a purplish fabric-- i was always right-- and as she stitched up the clothes, she had to admit it! I was grown before i realize not everyone could see colors with the same intensity i did.
When i first had a house, and need to patch a wall-- i amazed my husband by being able to "re-mix" a batch of paint to match the paint on the wall-- which is hard, since paint usually dries to a different color.
So to me, avacodo and misty fern are two very different colors... some of the hardest colors to name are shades of grey-- was it slate, or lead, or steel, or dove? biege and ecru are very different-- (natural wool and natural linen) I am very picky about colors, and hate when people "match" a blue red to a an orange red-- (it must be akin to some one with a "good ear" hearing me sing!)
we might be able to limit ourselves to 11 basic names for colors... but some colors, for me, are compounds-- a redish red orange (for a tomato, say) or a very redish blue red for a raspberry. raspberry red is very different than tomato red!
color names What of the names given to the colors of the visible spectrum, which includes blue, indigo, and violet, three distinct colors which most people would lump together under "blue". This also makes my point that violet is akin to blue, not to red, to which purple is akin. In other words, purple is a reddish hue, violet is a bluish hue, but people keep using the term "purple" when they mean "violet".
heraldic colors This introduces an interesting subject. The heraldic colors (more properly called "tinctures") have French names, of course, since the heraldic system was developed under the Normans, who spoke Norman French, even in England. The tinctures are: argent -- originally silver, represented on paper as white or -- originally gold, represented on paper as yellow sable -- black gules -- red, either scarlet or crimson azure -- blue, usually cerulean vert -- green, usually a fairly deep green, not light green These are the standard tinctures; also possible, but rare, were tenne -- ="tawny", orange murrey -- deep purple (the color of a mulberry) Anything represented in its natural color was described (blazoned) as "proper".
For those with interest in Chinese art there's a fascinating book on painting and the colors used, including their derivation in traditional painting called "The Way of Chinese Painting - Its Ideas and Techniques With Selections From the Seventeenth Century 'Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting'" by Mai-Mai Sze. My copy was purchased for me at Caves Book Co. 99 Chung Shan Rd N. (2) Taipai, China Tel 44754 in 1967. (Good luck!) Another good one is : "Outlines of Chinese Symbolism & Art Motives" (illustrated) by C.A.S. Williams. Dover Publications, New York. Sub title : "An alphabetical compendium of antique legends and beliefs, as reflected in the manners and customs of the Chinese" I found the descriptions of the movements used in traditional dramas and the meanings of the gestures great fun and informative. wow
Maybe if it had been spelled as you suggest,Fiberbabe, it wouldn't have gotten so far away from the original color.My computer is said to be "beige" colored, but I never saw a sheep like that, and I saw a lot of sheep because my wife raised them
When i first had a house, and need to patch a wall-- i amazed my husband by being able to "re-mix" a batch of paint to match the paint on the wall-- which is hard, since paint usually dries to a different color.
That is quite a skill, and usually takes quite a bit of work to train the eye... often never to be reached.
I completely agree that the few names for colors oversimplifies. Though I also have to say that at least saying "green" gets people thinking in the right direction, when "chartreuse" could mean diddly to them. Sometimes any kind of communication is better than none at all.
Yes, avacado and mist green are different colors. I know. It was to illustrate that the business of selling has made understanding color that much more difficult. They don't care if it's right, so long as it's different than the last name they picked, and sounds interesting. Which is why I really resented the name changing in my art supplies. I don't consider "indian red" and "terra cotta" to be the same color, but they have decided it will be, for their product. I imagine "indian red" was changed for matters of sensitivity, but it should have been to a name that didn't already have a place elsewhere. And it means I can't change brands and expect to get the same color for the same name. Frustrating. (Even "pure" colors are on shaky ground, now that they are switching to synthetics to produce the color rather than the sometimes dangerous minerals that are traditional. You can't just buy supplies by their names any more...)
But anyway, I too love the diversity of colors. On decorating, I used to get comments from family (and some cheeky paint department employees) that they didn't think the colour I chose would work... but they do. My family now waits till after to make any comment.
So is mine (well, not by profession, but as a consuming hobby)
How nice to find a common thread. (Hehe... that's my first pun, ever...) NOTE TO SELF: Late nights, physical exhaustion, kahlua and AWAD do not play well together
we might be able to limit ourselves to 11 basic names for colors
Well, the eleven basic colours of English are really a compromise list. I've found it varies much more by individual, but you can't put idiosyncrasies of perception into Roget's Thesaurus.
I have a twelfth basic colour, crimson: anything deep red, claret, burgundy, or plum is to me not red. It's crimson. (Hungarian also has a separate dark red.) I cannot see crimson as a kind of red. I have no idea why.
My family are artists (I'm not), and they have interesting variations. They all maintain that aqua/turquoise is a disinct basic colour, and so is cream/ochre. (Or possibly cream and ochre/tan were two extra colours, I can't remember.) My father also distinguishes scarlet and red, insisting that if something is scarlet it isn't red (= a deeper shade, but not my very deep crimson).
Then there's the different question of what you feel ought to be distinct basic colours. I call both light blue and dark blue "blue", but I'd be eminently happy using distinct terms, as they do in Russian (siniy and goluboy). So to a lesser extent with green, except that there are a lot of middle-range greens in nature to bind the light and dark ones.
I also feel it's wrong to lump light brownish shades such as tan or ochre with cardinal brown. (French distinguishes beige from marron IIRC -- the word brun isn't the real equivalent of 'brown' in all its English use; but I am open to correction by native speakers.) Nevertheless, I don't feel that tan names a basic colour. As far as names go, tan is a kind of brown, even though perceptually I want to elevate it to basic status.
But I don't feel this with aqua. I am happy to say an aqua thing is either blue or green or something intermediate: that is shades of blue gradually give way to shades of green.
I suspect anyone would come up with equally subtle complications once you examined them in detail.
My mum too. (Seamstress, that is. Stitched and taught sewing for years). Also (since she has polymathematical tendencies [grin]), a homeopathic doctor and a stock-market sub-broker, and a budding market-gardener.
But alas, I was never able to tell the right colour of thread for the particular fabric she was stitching. As a side-effect, however, I can do buttons and hemming quite efficiently!
My understanding was that or and argent were metals, not colours. Along with the furs: ermine etc (I can't remember the others - vair?), they form the three pinciple categories of colour/texture on a shield.
Technically, according to tradition, one may not 'charge' (place on top of) a metal with another metal, or a fur with another fur. These rules were, however, often disregarded in the 19th century when everybody and his brother wanted a coat of arms.
These days, I believe, the Royal College of Heraldry (or whatever it's called) is a bit more circumspect about the sorts of arms it recognises or issues.
Speaking of 'proper', in heraldry, it refers to anything shown 'realistically' - including animals. So a heraldic lion (in positions from couchant to rampant!) is quite different from a lion 'proper'. And so on...
No, 'proper' refers strictly to colour. A unicorn rampant, a phoenix, a lion passant guardant can all be proper. In the case of mythical animals it's a bit dodgy of course, but everyone agrees that unicorns are whitish. Phoenixes are multicoloured with crimson or purple predominating -- a phoenix proper is used in the arms of the Painters' Company IIRC.
Only very rarely are natural-looking versions of animals used, and they're usually described as different beasts. The dolphin is a bizarre monster, as is the tiger or tyger. To specify a natural one you would say Bengal tiger or whatever: examples occur.
Metal on metal is occasionally seen in Continental heraldry, e.g. the arms of the Papacy, St Peter's keys or on a field argent.
Your memory is actually very good, Shanks. I did mention in my first post on heraldic colors the word "tincture", which is the technical overall term for what are commonly regarded as colors. As you note, the tinctures are: the 2 metals, argent and or; the colours, azure, gules, sable, vert, tenne and murrey; and the furs, ermine, vair, counter ermine, counter vair and two other very rare variants whose names escape me without looking them up.
Besides this, certain terms/names have tinctures built in. The heraldic beast called a wyvern is always vert. Then there are the variations of roundels. A roundel is a charge (thing superimposed on a shield) which looks like a ball, and they can be of any tincture, and they have different names depending on the tincture, so that the tincture is not stated. A "fountain" is a roundel which is white with zigzag blue lines (argent, barry-wavy azure). If I remember correctly, a pellet is sable. Then there are the gouttes, which are charges which look like a teardrop, and, like roundels, have different names depending on their tinctures; gouttes de larmes are argent; gouttes d'huile are vert.
Nicholas has correctly stated the meaning of "proper" and noted the difference between a heraldic animal and a real animal. The lions passant gardant or (yellow, walking on all fours towards the dexter side of the shield [the left side as we see it] but with the head turned to look directly at the viewer) which are part of the Royal coat of arms, have a conventional form, not really very much like a real lion. Interestingly, like other male animals, they are supposed to be depicted with the suggestion of a male member, and usually are so depicted.
though i understood the joke, i couldn't tell if 'moyel' was the doctor or the trash receptacle. Atomica was of no use, so to save time for anyone else who is unsure, google reveals that the moyel (or mohel) is a person of the Jewish faith (but not necessarily a Rabbi) who is ordained, medically trained and certified to do circumcision under the guidelines of the Jewish religion.
Come to think of it, I believe you are correct. I've been jotting down these notes off the top of my head. It's been years since I looked into my trusty collection of books by Fox-Davies, whose books are, in my opinion, the best on the subject.
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at wow & CapK.
Which is why I really resented the name changing in my art supplies. I don't consider "indian red" and "terra cotta" to be the same color, but they have decided it will be, for their product. I imagine "indian red" was changed for matters of sensitivity, but it should have been to a name that didn't already have a place elsewhere. And it means I can't change brands and expect to get the same color for the same name. Frustrating. (Even "pure" colors are on shaky ground, now that they are switching to synthetics to produce the color rather than the sometimes dangerous minerals that are traditional. You can't just buy supplies by their names any more...)
