Javier BF <uaxuctum@YAHOO.ES>

On 26 Apr 2004 Javier BF <uaxuctum@...> wrote:

> But what is the base form for "piros"? For "aurora" or "dawn"
> I can only find "hajnal" in my (very limited) dictionaries.
  The base is the word "pi'r". It's nowadays an archaic lexeme:
there's a compound oldish literary word "hajnalpi'r" 'flush of
dawn, aurora' (< "hajnal" 'dawn'), a medical term "bo"rpi'r"
'epidermal suffusion, redness on the skin' (< "bo"r" 'skin'), and a
dialectal-elegant verb "pirkad" 'the day's breaking, it's dawning'.

  Apropos dictionary, did you try <http://szotar.sztaki.hu/english-
hungarian> yet? It contains the word "pi'r" with a translation of
'blush, flush, suffusion". You may download its public domain
version from <http://www.mek.iif.hu/porta/szint/egyeb/szotar/ssa-
dic/> (options in English: E-H - H-E original dict., E-H revised
dict., H-E revised dict., Query application for Windows).

> In Turkish, there are two words for red, "kIrmIzI" and "kIzIl", but
> AFAIK, "kIzIl" (bright/vivid red, vermilion, 'piros') is used as a
> subset of "kIrmIzI" (red in general).
  In Hungarian there's no common term for "red in general". (The
red spectrum is very wide and fragmented in Hungarian, there are
also additional "subcolours". One of them can be interesting for
the French: "bordo'" - this is the same as the French geographical
name Bordeaux, and has the meaning 'resembling the colour of the
Bordeaux wine', i.e. as the  English colour names "wine" and
"claret" according to my dictionary. It's a subset of "vo:ro:s" and
despite that it's of recent origin, colloquially it's used almost
as a common basic color.)