I was thinking this morning about our names for colors--at least our names for colors in the USA.

Now there are the eight basic ones that appear in a child's Crayola box:

red
orange
yellow
green
blue
purple
brown
black

(I'm ignoring Roy G. Biv here on purpose.)

OK. When I go to the museum with my new Macedonian friend, I'll make sure she's got those basic eight.

However, this morning I was thinking that certain ones of those, when mixed with a good helping of white--and, yes, I'll include white--become colors we all use here.

Red plus a good helping of white is pink, and pink we see as being distninctive from red.

Purple plus a good helping of white is lavender, which again we see as being distinctive from purple.

Brown plus that same good helping of white becomes tan in our eyes and finally beige. I would think she could use both of those in general conversation.

And black plus white becomes gray, and gray is pretty essential.

I think I can eliminate other colors (shades, hues, whatever) and still give her a good lesson on colors for the art museum

However--and the point of this meandering thread--I find it kind of weird that we don't have specific, generic names for:

Green plus a good helping of white.
Yellow plus a good helping of the same.
Orange plus the same..
Blue plus the same.

We might say light green, pale yellow, cream-sicle orange, and sky-blue, but we don't have brand new words for those basic colors plus a lot of white. Or do we? I mean here single word colors for a basic color plus white, as in pink, lavender, beige, tan, and gray.

If we do, I beg to be informed. (I'm not including colors, such as chartreuse which have some other color added in, such as yellow added into green plus white.)

I hope I've made sense. Basic color plus white = single word that no longer contains the original word for the orginal color.

Best regards,
WordWondering...