Re: Quest for colours: what's basic then?

--On Thursday, April 22, 2004 8:06 AM -0400 Javier BF <uaxuctum@...>
wrote:

>>> My problem was, for example, 'beige'.  It clearly distinct from brown,
>>> but one could imagine situations in which uncareful speakers refer to
>>> it with 'brown'.  I can also imagine such situations for 'orange' and
>>> 'red', though, so I cannot determine without a more formal definition
>>> of 'basic color' whether 'beige' is a basic colour in German.
>>
>> A quick Google image search of the word 'beige' illustrates how unstable
>> this term is across speakers. Apparently it can refer to a slightly
>> yellowish brown, a brownish gray and even a color approaching white with
>> a hint of tan.
>
> Unstable? Having a range that includes yellowish brow, brownish
> gray and whitish tan is no more "unstable" than the very wide
> range comprised by brown (which is used as cover term for colour
> perceptions as different as sienna, umber and ochre). I think
> the concept of beige is as clear and stable as that of brown:
> brown is any shade between red and yellow that is not vivid
> (the vivid ones are "orange"); beige is any light insaturated
> shade between red and yellow that is not more reddish than
> yellowish - which is a subset of the above definition of brown,
> unless in the speaker's idiolect beige has become an independent
> category and then his definition of brown is the above minus
> that of beige.
I've always regarded beige more or less as a synonym of tan or light brown.
I'm still hesitant to classify it as a basic color term though, as I can't
think of a single instance I've used it in the past several months and the
fact that I've had to explain to native speakers of English what the word
means. I'm almost certain I had to be taught the term in school somewhere,
so it isn't part of everybody's idiolect. It also seems to be a property of
basic color terms that there is a more or less agreed upon focal point for
that color, although its precise boundaries can vary widely from dialect to
dialect and speaker to speaker. However, some more quick Google searching
reveals some different opinions on what exactly the focal point for beige
is. The following descriptions sound like rather distinct colors to me:

http://ves.btrd.ab.ca/~kidadj6A/page4.html describes it as a "light brown".
http://www.pachinchillas.com/mutations1.html says it is a "tan color, dark
or light".
http://www.iconlanguage.com/PDF%20docs/Instant%20Books/H%20book_fullsheet.p
df calls it "yellow and gray".
Even http://www.m-w.com (Webster's) has two definitions for the color: "a :
a variable color averaging light grayish yellowish brown b : a pale to
grayish yellow".