color names

[Lionel Mandrake]

I always thought "purple" meant a mixture of red and violet, hence not a color of the rainbow. Now I find that many Americans, perhaps most, use "purple" as I would "violet", i.e., as a color of the rainbow. People who do that tend not to use the word "violet" except to designate a type of flower, the color of which they would describe as "purple". Am I right?

[CrispyQ]

1. To me, violet is a lighter shade of purple, brighter/darker than lavender. -nt

[Lionel Mandrake]

4. I have no idea what color lavender is.

There's also magenta, which has a lot of red in it.

[Foolacious]

2. They're synonymous for me, but not to my wife

Violet is lighter and less red by her definition. It might be worth noting that I grew up on the US West Coast, and she on the East Coast.

[Lionel Mandrake]

3. Interesting.

There might be regional variation in usage of these terms.

I also grew up on the West Coast, but to me the terms are not synonymous.

[Igel]

5. That's about right.

My students, juniors and seniors in HS in TX, mostly just use "purple."

But you also have to consider background knowledge. So while most of the kids just use "purple," they also have a limited number of color terms at their disposal. Red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple are about it. Maybe "turquoise" or some other item-specific color terms. With 'gold' and 'silver' and then composite "blue-green" or "red-orange". When they hear "aqua" or "teal" or "magenta" or "umber" they either hear "zzzz" and assume that it's some unimportant something or, if they have some passing familiarity with the word, translate it to simpler terms. "Light blue," "dark blue-green" or "bright pinkish-red" or "dark green-brown".

Now, the kids that are in art or design they have mastery of a wide range of color terms. Note that in English the acquisition of color terms historically has been rather late. I mean, "orange" as a basic color term only came about when oranges became not that uncommon. Until then light orange was yellow and dark orange was just red or "light red" or "yellow red". Large literature on color terms in the linguist's library.

Knowing the things behind the color helps. If you are familiar with violets then "violet" is an okay color term. So my kids know that a violet is a kind of flower, or most do, but ask them to describe one and they can't. It's like "saffron" or, um, "teal"--one's from a spice and the other's from a bird. (But in this is like knowing the words for different lathe tool shapes--had a gig where the differences were important and those who hadn't used lathes and shaped their own tools were out to sea and needed a tutorial.)