Re: NATLANG: Colours

On 26 Apr 2004 Tommie L Powell <tommiepowell@...> wrote:

> some time in the very distant past, red epitomized beauty to the
> Slavs.
  The relation exists but in the opposite direction: in old Russian
folk-poetry "krasnaya devitsa" meant 'beautiful virgin/maid(en)'.
And what kind of attributes have beautiful virgins in the past?
Most of all, they were white-faces (as an opposition to the
peasantesses who were sun-tanned during the open-air work), and
they were _rosy_-cheeked because the capillaries showed through
their transparent skin. That is: 'beautiful > rosy-cheeked > rosy >
red'.