^
You already have those in the color list for resistors.
Red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve and cream and crimson and silver and rose and azure and lemon and russet and grey and purple and white and pink and orange and blue.
Those ought to be enough for anybody.
Can you throw in turquoise?
Ludwig von Drake – The Spectrum Song
(From the very first episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color)
Lyrics:
I wanted to use this as an epigraph in my book Zap!, but we couldn’t get permission.
I didn’t understand the last line for years. It’s a reference to the song “Lavender Blue”, sung by Burl Ives in the Disney film So Dear to my Heart. The movie was released in 1948, and wasn’t a huge success, while WWoC premiered 13 years later in 1961. Why they made a joke depending on a lackluster film from over a dozen years earlier I do not understand.
The problem with color words is a question of whether they’re spectral-based or historical-based. If we’re talking the spectrum then it only makes sense that we need to have cyan and magenta included. As it is, pink is largely thought of as light red, but I’ve seen pink used to describe things from almost light orange all the way through light red and light magenta to even pushing light purple. Pink is such a vague color, but it has such a prevalence in modern culture that we can’t get rid of it. To that similar extent, what is described as blue covers a huge portion of the spectrum that really should be split up to include cyan, and then on the other end orange is such a small portion of the spectrum but it gets its own name. Then again, even if it’s a small amount of the spectrum, it’s something we see enough in nature and in everyday life that it makes sense to give it it’s own name.
So, in this context, I think it makes sense that if we’re going to add a color name it should be because it’s something we see a lot and find we have to clarify what we mean. That’s why orange exists and not red-yellow or yellow-red and also why pink exists. I rarely hear distinctions about a red orange, but I do often hear things called blue-green, so it would make sense to me to add cyan or some word to describe that range more than any other color.
Crayola crayons were originally sold as an artist’s item, not something for children to use. It wasn’t till the teens that Crayola started marketing crayons to children. Even then, Crayola still market a variety of crayons for the adults. Most of these were pressed crayons, molded under pressure and were much harder than regular crayons. Also broke a lot easier too. They were also sold under other names such as Besco. I recently scored a 24 count set of crayons from about 1907, all unused in mint condition. Most of the color names used back then are not in use any more. Some of the crayons colors from then are Chrome Green, light and Madder Lake.
No where in the column cited does it say that English only has 11 basic color words. It says that across 98 languages studied they had words for these colors in common.
These are already words that are colors. You disproved your OP in your OP.
Maybe you do but not all of us do.
It’s an old nursery rhyme Lavender's Blue - Wikipedia and references colors – makes sense they’d throw it in there.
I remember it from the 80s hit by Marillion.
Yes, but von Drake was almost certainly referencing the Burl Ives song. Makes sense, because So Dear to my Heart was, after all, a Disney film.
OK, Cecil doesn’t give the concept of Basic Color Words (BCW) a very good description. The idea is not that there’s only 11 color words in English or any other language. Rather, the BCW are words that are generally used when describing the color of a random object. So the BCW will cover pretty much the entire color space.
Did nothing of the kind. Those are not BCW, they’re secondary color words, of which English has a plethora. Secondary color words are generally subsumed under one of the BCW. For instance, cardinal and scarlet are considered shades of red. But nothing is considered a shade of scarlet nor is red considered a shade of anything else.
I suggested turquoise and lime because they sort of fall along the boundaries of two fo the BCW. And there seems to be somewhat of a consensus here that a color in the blue-green area is likely to be the next BCW. Or maybe they just feel there’s a need for such a color. But is it going to be cyan, turquoise, teal, or aqua? Personally, I didn’t encounter the word cyan until some time in adulthood (like in my 30s), so it’s not a color word that easily comes to mind. Younger people may have a different experience.
Another possibility for #12, in a different part of the color space, is maroon. Does anyone think that it’s a distinct color different than purple?
Maroon is a shade of red, and not purple at all.
It’s also a useful Bugs Bunny insult.
Teal is an (the?) obvious choice. It’s already a basic color in Chinese tradition, isn’t it?
That is a weird color wheel.
Normally in pigment mixing one would use cyan, yellow, & magenta, *not *blue, red, & yellow. And of course in electronic displays we use red, green, & blue.
Nothing weird about that color wheel.
There are lots of different ways to represent human color vision in a 2D wheel, all equally (in-)accurate.
Actually pigment mixing is typically represented with RBY. CYM(K) is used by printers where subtractive colors are mixed in a different way (e.g. you can make a lighter color by just increasing the space between dots…it’s not the same thing that painters do)
Well, the T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom logos. I’ve always kind of joked that that’s the only place in the wild where that color exists.
As somebody who grew up with a Commodore VIC-20, I would go with cyan, as well. Looking at the rainbow or a chart of the visible spectrum, it seems odd to me that cyan should be a basic color. Not as obvious, there’s also that chartreuse region between green and yellow and that amber region between orange and yellow (like with yellow traffic lights–they’re not really yellow; they’re not quite orange; they’re amber.)
I suppose, but I’ve seen colors that seemed more purplish than reddish called maroon. For example, the first time I recall encountering the color/word was on the uniforms of some little league team which everyone was calling maroon. But the color was actually more of a reddish purple than a brownish red.
I want to note that people in this thread are getting hung up on the wrong thing. This is mostly a linguistics question, not one of light, the spectrum/rainbow, color wheels, additive/subtractive colors, or primary/secondary colors.
Think about it this way: Is there some word that people use fairly often (although it doesn’t have to be the majority of the time) instead of one of the 11 BCW for some section of the color space? I doubt if cyan is used all that often, except in technical uses. Maroon, turquoise, teal, and aqua may qualify. Maybe some other word: olive, peach, tan, beige, something else?
Aren’t cyan and magenta different shades of red and blue? So even printers use a version of RBY, just lighter/brighter.
Sure. All these terms are fuzzily open to interpretation, I was just putting mine out there. Even “black” and “white” are surprisingly soft, IME.
Right. I bet “tan” and/or “beige” turn up a lot in common conversation.
How about a multiple-choice poll? Which
That should be “it seems odd to me that cyan should not be a basic color.”