Re: NATLANG: Colours

On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 12:28:07PM -0400, Amanda Babcock wrote:
> I am amazed to find out that "azure" in English means
> "light blue".  I always assumed it was a particularly
> saturated, overwhelming deep blue - like a good sapphire.
I share your amazement for precisely the same reason.  So the question
is, what was it about the contexts in which we encountered that word
that gave us the misapprehension?

> Probably because there was no crayon for it.
Heh.  But by gosh I know Burnt Sienna when I see it!  And my eyes
are Cornflower (when they're on the blue end of their spectral variance
at least).

By the way, this may have come up earlier in the thread, which I wasn't
following, but "azure" is a borrowing from the Old Spanish word that
became "azul" in modern Spanish.  OS borrowed it from Arabic
"al-la:zaward", which was in turn borrowed from Persian "la:Zward".  All
of the earlier words referred to the gem we now call "lapis lazuli", the
"lazuli" portion of which descends from the same Persian root.

-Mark