What word did Middle English have in place of “light" as in: “light blue”, “light green” etc.?

Question

In English, we often use the adjective light before another colour to express a whiter shade of hue. For example, light blue, light green, light brown, etc. The term pale is used in a similar way, e.g.; pale grey, pale yellow, and pale red.

Etymonline dates this usage of light:

light (adj.2) (see light (n.)). Meaning "pale-hued" is from 1540s.

and for pale early 1300s

pale (adj.) early 14c., from Old French paile "pale, light-colored" (12c., Modern French pâle), from Latin pallidus "pale, pallid, wan, colorless," from pallere "be pale, grow pale,"

If we look at names for “light blue”, only azure predates Early Modern English

• azure early 14c., from Old French azur, asur, a color name...
• sky blue is said to have first appeared in print in 1704

  A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1704), vol. 2, p. 322, where John Nieuhoff describes certain flowers: "they are of a lovely sky blue colour, and yellow in the middle" _Wikipedia

• cyan (originally called cyan-blue) meaning ‘light blue’ is dated 1879

To illustrate my point more clearly, here is a Google Ngram set at British English, which suggests that the combination, light + name of colour, began from mid 17th century.

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Questions

• How did Middle and Early Modern English speakers say that a colour was light?
• Did they place term white before a colour; e.g. whit blewe (white blue)?
• What does whyte russet mean? Is it a ‘pale reddish-brown’?

Answer 1

It seems that you could use Fair, Fade or Faint (there might be others)

Fair

and its other forms

fair (adj.) Also (early) faȝer, faier, fei(e)r, vair, fare, fer(e, war, fæger, fægerra, fægrost

According to the Middle English dictionary from Umich

(a) Light, bright, or shining (as opposed to dark); (b) of persons: light of complexion or color of hair and eyes; fair.

It seems to have been used with color (other than applied to skin or complexion):

Found at least one reference as cited in Altenglische legenden ... Horstmann, Carl, ed. b. 1851.

þat þis on schal beo fair blu cloth

...

Faint

Of things, actions, functions, etc.: weak, feeble; impaired, poor; pale (color)...

...

Fade

Of color or things having color: lacking in brilliance; pale, discolored, dim; dull; fade-heued.

(Fade-heued meaning "light-colored")

>c1300 SLeg.Mich.(LdMisc 108) 672: Ho-so hath of þe eorþe mest, he is..Of fade [vr. vad] colur.

...

As for your example of "whyte Russet" I think russet is used here in the sense of

"a serviceable woolen cloth, usu. of plain or subdued color & usu. worn by the poor or by workingmen (also by the Duke of Suffolk as a sea-cloak)"

the same way Whites can be used for "clothes usually of white color" in modern sense, Russet is used by analogy for the piece of cloth usually of the color Russet or the fabric material itself with which one makes russets.

See here in The Stonor letters and papers, 1290-1483; ed. for the Royal historical society, from the original documents in the Public record office, by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, for Russet used with the color Black, for example, in the sense of piece of cloth or fabric material.

a ȝerde off blake russet karyssey to make Richert Baron a dublet

a payre off hosyn off russet karyssey,

Item a gowne of russet furryd wt blakke,

another example of russet used in the sense of fabric.

And is as gladde of a goune · of a graye russet /

So the answer is I don't think whyte russet mean a light russet (color).

Answer 2

From about 1300 is Lenten ys come with loue to toune
(alternative source)

The rose rayleth hire rode;
The leues on the lyhte wode
Waxen al with wille.

which has been translated as:

The rose begins to blush;
The leaves in the light-green wood
All unfurl gladly.

Other translations exist such as that of Aniee Jeong

An early modern English example is from Parthenophil and Parthenophe. Sonnettes, Madrigals, Elegies and Odes

There in amantle of light greene,
Reseru'd by custome for that day
Parthenophe they did aray
And did create her sommers Queene,
And ruler of their merrie may.

Barnabe Barnes, May 1593.

Answer 3

Etymonline is wrong; light has been used to modify color words long before the 1540s. To supplement @DavePHD's answer, here are a few more examples courtesy of a Middle English dictionary creatively titled, Middle English Dictionary:

• "Ʒelouʒ colour [of urine] & melky..tokeneþ feblenes of hete..& liʒt red [L subrufus] tokeneþ mene." - [1398, Middle English translation of Bartholomaeus's De Proprietatibus Rerum]

• "pannis integris de lyghtgrene" - [1420, Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham]

• "peciæ de light blew and sade blew operatæ." - [1449, Testamenta Eboracensia]

• "Periot is stone þat is lyʒt grene" - [1500, Lapidary in Peterborough 33]

And here's one I found in Chaucer [late 14th-century], modifying watchet (a shade of blue):

Y-clad he was ful smal and proprely, al in a kirtel of a liht wachet — ful faire and thikke been the poyntes set.

Answer 4

Even today, there's confusion regarding color terminology. The idea of "light blue" could refer to the hue called "blue" with lots of white added to it (that's often referred to in the context of prints and dyes as "a tint of blue" (just as by adding black to a hue, one produces various "shades of blue").

However, the idea of "light blue" might also embrace the idea of adding the complement of blue (that color lying 180-degrees apart from the specified color on a color wheel), which "desaturates" the hue, and brings it incrementally closer to gray.

Thus, to lighten a color, or to make it paler, could mean (without more restrictive definitions) adding white to produce a tint, or adding the complement, in order to desaturate it.

The Munsell System of color identification specified three metrics, or "dimensions," of color: hue, value, chroma. "Hue" is the name of the pure color by its family name (blue, red, green, etc.). "Value" is how light the hue is in terms of tinting and shading (represented along a vertical axis, with pure white at the north pole, and pure black at the south). "Chroma" referred to the saturation or purity of a hue. The pure hue was represented on the "equator" of a sphere, with progressively less saturated, or "grayer," versions of the hue appearing as it moved toward the central Value axis.

The Pantone System of color-matching appeared after Munsell (a painter by profession) did his classification, but uses similar dimensions, which I remember as being Hue, Brightness, and Saturation.

The above comments on color assume the subtractive model of color production; i.e., colors as it pertains to paints, pigments, dyes, and semi-opaque filters of glass, plastic, etc.