Timeline for What word did Middle English have in place of “light" as in: “light blue”, “light green” etc.?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 25, 2023 at 19:55 | answer | added | Heartspring | timeline score: 2 | |
| Sep 28, 2022 at 17:26 | answer | added | economic freedom | timeline score: -1 | |
| Jul 18, 2016 at 17:16 | answer | added | P. O. | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jul 18, 2016 at 16:45 | answer | added | DavePhD | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jul 7, 2016 at 3:42 | history | protected | Mari-Lou A | ||
| Jul 1, 2016 at 20:21 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | @Josh61 thanks, it's an excellent link. | |
| Jul 1, 2016 at 19:59 | comment | added | user66974 | Worth a look: worldwidewords.org/articles/colour.htm | |
| Jul 1, 2016 at 0:54 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | @Mitch go ahead post that as an answer. I posted something because I waited for the experts. No one came forward. I don't think English in 1400 was unrecognizable to speakers in the 1600, that's not how language works, but definitely in ME there are obsolete expressions and turn of phrases and I'm sure many apply to colour terms. But... blue, whether it is spelled blew, or blu still refers to a specific shade, and we can verify this in art. An artist who painted between 1300 -1400, used paints which had names, the same names that artists use today e.g. burnt sienna, scarlet, ochre etc. | |
| Jul 1, 2016 at 0:16 | comment | added | Mitch | @Mari-LouA It's an analogy. As similar as it may seem, ME is a different language. What they mean by particular words is closely related to how we mean them but not necessarily the same. What did people call pink before there was a word pink, or orange before orange? There's no guarantee that people said anything at all for those. In some of these foreign lanuages theres is a word that works for what we call both red and yellow. They have no word for just red or just yellow. They just say 'this kind of red-yellow, the one that looks like blood' or 'that kind of r-y, that looks like dandelions' | |
| Jun 30, 2016 at 19:00 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | @Mitch the question is limited to the English language. What does the link tell me how the English communicated different shades of colour in medieval England? But I think you are right about bright, maybe in the 15th century it had a different meaning when it was attached to a colour. | |
| Jun 30, 2016 at 18:55 | comment | added | Mitch | Basic Colour Categories from World Atlas of Language Structure | |
| Jun 30, 2016 at 18:46 | comment | added | Mitch | I'm surprised that you'd think 'no answer' is not a legitimate answer. Some languages have only 3 color terms. You're asking a question like 'how did a language which only has a word for the range red-to-yellow say red?' The point is they just don't. So I'm not sure what is an acceptable answer. Also, what is 'light'? Less saturated in an HSV model. 'Bright' sounds like more saturated to me. | |
| Jun 30, 2016 at 17:10 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | No, @Mitch I never read Chaucer, Piers Plowman, or the William Tyndale Bible. The first two are incomprehensible to me. I was merely struck to discover that expressions I took for granted, such as light blue, light red and light green did not seem to have existed prior to Shakespeare or, if you prefer, the 1600s. I do not consider, "They didn't bother", to be a legitimate answer, but you're free to post it if that is what you think. | |
| Jun 30, 2016 at 12:57 | comment | added | Mitch | Was there any particular motivation that got you to ask this question? Like, were you casually reading Chaucer, as one does, and saw the word 'blue' and wondered how he would have said 'light blue'? You do realize that a legitimate answer was 'They didn't bother'. For example, what is the term that Middle English have for 'indigo'? It was probably just 'purple' since Newton came up with the term indigo himself (for some intermediate shade of purple). Also, for clarification, are you looking for a systematic construction or is one 'light' word for each color OK? | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 22:38 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | Related: Where did the term “strawberry blonde” come from? | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:50 | comment | added | Oldbag | I suspect that the answer to this question would depend on the color technology (paints/dyes) and the local environment of the culture. Thus, shades of blue, for example, would probably be described by something in nature that they resembled (sky, robin's egg) or by the animal/mineral/vegetable extract used to make a pigment for paints or fabric dyes. ("Light" or "dark" may not have been an important factor in the description.) | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 13:35 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/747785454536237057 | ||
| Jun 28, 2016 at 11:37 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added visual reference
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| Jun 28, 2016 at 8:28 | history | asked | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 3.0 |