Colors
Colors in our Languages
http://members.verizon.net/~vze44bxg/colors.html
Primary colors:
Secondary colors:
violet (purple)
golden
opaque
red, pink, maroon, crimson, scarlet,
>brown, khaki, beige(?), puce,
>yellow, ochre(?), buff, blonde, auburn, sienna
>green, hazel, chartreuse, teal, aqua
>blue, azure, cerulean
>purple, mauve, magenta, fuschia
>black, white, grey, ecru, cyan
>red, pink, maroon, crimson, scarlet,
>brown, khaki, beige(?), puce,
umber
turquoise
>
>heliotrope
>
>dun
beige
Beige Book (Federal Reserve Board's report, eight times a year, of
regional economic conditions)
black
blackbird
black pepper; black coffee; black tea
in black and white
operating in the black (cf. in the red)
black belt
black blood
blackbody
black box
black comedy (cf. film noir)
black eye (i.e. circumorbital haematoma or hematoma)
black-eyed pea
black film (film noir) cf. black comedy
black gold (i.e. petroleum; oil) rush (cf. klondike gold rush)
black holes (as in astronomy) cf. white dwarf stars
black ice
Black Friday
black hole (cf. white hole)
Black Hole of Calcutta
blacklist (cf. white list)
black humor
black jack (or blackjack): a game of chance
black and blue
black magic
blackmail (cf. greenmail)
black market (Cf. gray market)
black night (cf. white night)
blackout (cf. brownout)
Black Plague
black sheep (Cf. dark horse)
blacksmith
black-tie (cf. white-tie)
black-water rafting (cf. white-water rafting)
blue
black and blue
Blue and the Gray (Blue: Union; Gray: Confederate)
navy blue
Blue Baby Syndrome (Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig)
Blue Baby or Baby with Heart Disease
out of the blue; into the blue
blue in the face (i.e. extremely exasperated)
Big Blue (i.e. IBM)
Oval Blue (i.e. Ford Motor)
Blue Angels (US Navy flyers or jets)
Blue Ball, Pennsylvania (in Lancaster County)
blue balls (i.e. vasocongestion)
Blue Book (as in Kelley Blue Book, for used cars)
blue book (school examination book)
Blue Book (cf. White Book, Green Book, Red Book,
Purple Book)
cordon bleu (blue)
bluebeard
bluebell
blueberry
bluebird
blue blood
bluebonnet
blue cheese
blue chip [finan.]
blue chips (cf. white chips)
blue-collar worker (cf. white collar)
blue crab
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
a blue day
Blue Devils (Duke University basketball team)
blue diamond
Blue Diamond, Nevada
Blue Diamond of the Crown (Hope Diamond)
blue dog
blue fish
blue flu
blue gill (a common sunfish)
bluegrass (Kentucky bluegrass; Bluegrass State)
(also country music)
blue heron (great blue heron)
Blue Jackets (NHL ice hockey team; Columbus, Ohio)
bluejacket
Blue Jays (MLB baseball team; Toronto, Canada)
blue jeans
Blue Knights
The BLUE KNIGHTS is a non-profit fraternal organization consisting of active and retired law enforcement men & women who enjoy riding motorcycles
blue joke
blue laws
(a name first used in the eighteenth century to
describe certain supposititious laws of extreme
rigor reported to have been enacted in New
Haven; hence, any puritanical laws. [U. S.] )
blue lips
Blue Monday
blue movie
bluenose
blue pencil
blue ribbon; blue-ribbon panel; blue-ribbon jury
Blue Shield/Blue Cross
blue squirrel
blue states (cf. red states)
blue suede shoe (Elvis Presley)
bluetooth
blue violet
out of the blue
a true-blue hero
to make so blue -
once in a blue moon
true-blue [coll.]
a bolt from the blue
to have a blue fit
to be blue-blooded
to look blue [fig.]
feeling blue
to be in a blue funk
blueprint; blue print
blue plate luncheon (blue plate special)
blue light special
bluetooth (pink Cadillac with a bluetooth)
singing the blues; get the blues
a blue song (or blues)
once in a blue moon
bluestocking \BLOO-stock-ing\
(noun) : a woman having intellectual or literary interests
Example sentence:
Times have changed since English critic William
Hazlitt wrote in 1822, "I have an utter aversion to
bluestockings. I do not care a fig for any woman
that knows even what 'an author' means."
Did you know?
In mid-18th century England a group of ladies
decided to replace evenings of card playing and
idle chatter with "conversation parties," inviting
illustrious men of letters to discuss literary
and intellectual topics with them. One regular
guest was scholar-botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet.
His hostesses willingly overlooked his cheap blue
worsted stockings (a type disdained by the elite) in
order to have the benefit of his lively conversation.
Those who considered it inappropriate for women to
aspire to learning derisively called the group the
"Blue Stocking Society." The women who were
the original bluestockings rose above the attempted
put-down and adopted the epithet as a name
for members of their society
brown
brownout (cf. blackout)
brown bag lunch
brown sauce (cf. white sauce)
brown study
brownie (cookies; girl scout)
dark
dark horse
dark matter
dark meat
gold, golden
California gold rush
Klondike gold rush (Alaska)
golden opportunity
silence is golden
golden calf (as in Bible) i.e. any false god
golden opportunity
Golden Mean
gray
Blue and the Gray (Blue: Union; Gray: Confederate)
graybeard (cf. whitebeard)
green
green light
green around the gills
Green Book (cf. White Book, Blue Book, Red Book, Purple Book)
green horse
green jackets (as in goft champions)
green with envy
greenbacks (money)
greens (vegetables)
The grass is always greener over the septic tank
Greenpeace International
Green Party
green eyes
Green Berets
greenmail (cf. blackmail)
opaque
opaque accounting (i.e. overstated)
orange
orange jumpsuits
pink
pink Cadillac
pink collar (female office worker)
pink elephant
Pink Panther
pink salmon
pink slips
pink sheets; pink-sheet stocks (OTC)
pink sheets (The US House Of Representatives Committee
on Standards of Official Conduct Advisory Memoranda)
in the pink
tickled pink (very pleased, delighted)
purple
purple heart
purple passages
red
red herring \RED-HAIR-ing\ (noun)
1 : a herring cured by salting and slow smoking to a dark
brown color
*2 : something that distracts attention from the real issue
Example sentence:
Mr. Dupont thought the fight was just a red herring
the Morse brothers used to distract people while
their cousin robbed the cash register.
- Did you know?
Believe it or not, "red herring" has as much to do with
hunting dogs as with brightly colored fish. Here's how:
A herring is a soft-finned bony fish. People who like
to eat herring have long preserved them by salting
and slow smoking them. That process makes a
herring turn red or dark brown -- and gives them
a very strong smell. Dogs love to sniff such
smelly treats, a fact that makes the fish a perfect
diversion for anyone trying to distract hunting dogs
from the trail of their quarry. The practice of using
preserved fish to confuse hunting dogs led to the use
of the term "red herring" for anything that diverts
attention from the issue at hand.
in the red (i.e. operating at a loss; in debt)
(cf. in the black)
red blood cell (cf. white blood cell)
Red Book (a book containing the names of all the persons
in the service of the state)
(cf. White Book, Blue Book, Green Book, Purple Book)
red carpet (treatment, welcome)
red cat
Red Communist; Red Guard
Red Cross
red envelopes
red-eye (as in flight)
red flag
Red Guards (Cultural Revolution in China)
red-handed (as in caught red-handed)
Red Hat
red-hot (cf. white hot)
Red Indian (Native American)
red ink
red-light district (cf. white way)
red list of threatened species
red meat
red pepper
Red Sea
red shift (physics; Doppler effect)
red states (cf. blue states)
red-tag sale
red tape (as in bureaucracy)
red tide
Red Wings (Detroit ice hockey pro team)
red wine (cf. white wine)
redwing blackbird (red-winged blackbird)
redwood (as in California)
red zone defense
redbook (national report of retailing sale)
redneck
redbrick \RED-brik\ (adjective)
1 : built of red brick
*2 often capitalized : of, relating to, or being the British
universities founded in the 19th or early 20th century
Example sentence:
Maureen graduated with a Redbrick degree three
years ago and now works in London.
Did you know?
Although red brick is a perfectly innocent building
material in America, the British usage of "redbrick"
is often potentially uncomplimentary. "Redbrick" is a
British coinage created to denote the universities
which were newer and perhaps less prestigious
than Oxford and Cambridge (and sometimes the
ancient universities of Scotland). Logically
enough, these newer universities did tend to be
constructed of red brick, rather than the stone used
for Oxford and Cambridge, and were most often
created in industrial cities such as Liverpool.
Sometimes the term is also used to distinguish
these universities from those built after World
War II. Limited evidence suggests that "redbrick"
may be developing an extended meaning of
"lower-class" or "working class," but this is
not established enough to merit dictionary entry.
scarlet
scarlet fever
scarlet letter
scarlet women
scarlet pimpernel \SKAR-luht-PIM-per-nell\
noun: a person who rescues others from mortal danger
by smuggling them across a border
Example sentence:
During World War II, Father Pierre-Marie Benoit
acted as a Scarlet Pimpernel, smuggling Jewish
refugees to Spain or Switzerland to save them
from Nazi persecution.
Did you know?
In 1905, Hungarian-born novelist Baroness
Emmuska Orczy, introduced the world to Sir
Percy Blakeney, ostensibly a foppish English
aristocrat, but secretly a swashbuckling hero
known as "The Scarlet Pimpernel" who rescued
aristocrats from certain death in the French
Revolution by smuggling them to England.
In _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, Blakeney's
character used a drawing of a small, red,
star-shaped flower known in England as a
"scarlet pimpernel" as a signature of his
involvement in an escape. The popularity
of Orczy's novel prompted English
speakers to start using "scarlet pimpernel"
for any daring hero who smuggled those in
danger to a safe haven in another country.
The botanical "pimpernel" takes its name
from "pimpinella," the Latin name of a
medicinal herb.
Silver
silver bullet
white
in black and white (vs. in living colors)
in home white (as in basketball teams; home team wearing white uniforms) or home whites (cf. road whites or road grays)
road whites
white ant (a termite)
whitebeard (cf. graybeard)
White-box PCs (no-name PCs, unbranded PCs)
white blood cell (cf. red blood cell)
White Book (cf. Green Book, Blue Book, Red Book, Purple Book)
white book (as government report)
white chip (cf. blue chip)
white dwarf stars (cf. black holes, as in astronomy)
white-footed mouse
white gold
white hole (cf. black hole)
white hope (as in boxing)
white-hot (cf. red hot)
White House
white hunter
(a white man serving as a guide and professional hunter to
an African safari)
white knight (as in savior rescuer)
white-knuckle time, white-knuckle waiting (i.e. stressful, worrying)
a white-knucle issue
white lie
white list (cf. blacklist)
White Man's burden (Rudyard Kipling)
white night (cf. black night)
white noise
whiteout
white pages (cf. yellow pages; blue pages)
Mao Tse-tung: Why it is necessary to discuss the White Paper
White Paper regarding Taiwan and its future
White Paper (in foreign affairs)
white paper (i.e. tabula rasa)
White Russian (i.e. Belarussian)
white sand
white sale
white sauce (cf. brown sauce)
white slave (prostitute); white slavery (prostitution)
white supremacist; white supremacy
white terror
white-tie (cf. black-tie)
white trash (poor white)
whitewash
white water rafting (cf. black-water rafting)
white way (cf. red-light district)
white wine (cf. red wine)
white elephant \WITE EL-uh-phunt\ (noun)
*1 : a property requiring much care and expense and
yielding little profit
2 a : an object no longer of value to its owner
but of value to others b : something of little
or no value
Example sentence:
The town's most notorious white elephant
is the old opera house, which earns very little
in admission fees but costs thousands of dollars
a year to repair and maintain.
Did you know?
The real "white elephant" (the kind with a
trunk) is a pale pachyderm that has long been
an object of veneration in India, Sri Lanka,
Thailand, and Myanmar. Too revered to be
a beast of burden, the white elephant earned
a reputation as a burdensome beast, one that
required constant care and feeding but never
brought a single cent (or paisa or satang or
pya) to its owner. One story has it that the
kings of Siam (the old name for Thailand)
gave white elephants as gifts to those they
wished to ruin, hoping that the cost of
maintaining the voracious but sacred
mammal would drive its new owner
to the poorhouse.
yellow
tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree
yellow-dog; yellow-dog contract
yellow bile (a humor as in physiology)
yellow fever; yellow-fever mosquito
yellow-fin tuna
yellowlegs (a bird)
yellow jersey (as in bicycling racing stage leader)
yellow journalism
yellow pages (cf. white pages; blue pages)
flashing yellow light
yellow perch (a fish)
yellow peril
yellow jacket
yellowtail
yellow plum
Yellow Star
yellow boletus
yellow journal
yellow of an egg
yellow mica [min.]
yellow lines (No Parking!)
yellow dog contract
xanthic \ZAN-thik\
(adjective): of, relating to, or tending toward a yellow color
Example sentence:
At one time, botanists categorized flowers
containing yellow as "xanthic" and those
containing blue as "cyanic."
Did you know?
"Xanthic" has its roots in the Greek word
"xanthos" which means "yellow." A number of
botanical, chemical, and medical words trace
to "xanthos," but not many words in common use
share this colorful root. By way of contrast, its
fellow x-roots "xeno-" ("foreign"), "xero-" ("dry"),
and "xylo-" ("wood") have all produced relatively
common English words, e.g., "xenophile,"
"xerographic," and "xylophone."