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

In a message dated 4/22/2004 5:46:51 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
herodote92@YAHOO.COM writes:

>When people discovered them, that
>looked at their color, decided that there wasn't any
>word dedicated to that special color, so they just
>forged the adjective "orange", meaning "the color of
>an orange" (oranges were also called "Chinese apples",
>which clearly indicates that they were not
>aborigenes). People who haven't seen a orange (or
>other things having this colour) in their life don't
>need the concept of an "orange" color.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that before oranges were introduced into
Europe, that color was known as "jacinth."  That may have been a technical term
(in heraldry?) and not as common as "orange" later became.

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