(or "colors" for them thar US'ns in the crowd)

I was driving in the country round about here recently, and all the lilacs are in bloom. This gave rise to some meandering in my brain about colours....Why do some things become colours, and not others? how does it happen? does the colour ever precede - and therefore give the name to - the thing?

Of course, there are some "pure" colour names: the primaries of red, blue and yellow; the secondaries of green, orange and purple. Some other colours are, to the best of my knowledge, "just" colours: brown, grey, mauve, pink, scarlet, crimson. But there are all kinds of shades of colour (and meaning).

Who decided that pale purple should be "lilac"? And when you talk about "coffee" (more often "coffee-coloured" actually), do you mean before or after you've added the cream? And what about cream? and ivory? periwinkle? cinnamon? wine? burgundy? rose? saffron? ochre? lemon? peach?

How does something give its name to a colour? by being the Platonic ideal of that shade of colour? (like a lemon? being the lemon-est?)

Gad, lookit the time. I KNEW I shouldn't return to AWADtalk!