Color Semantics - Tumblr Posts
PhD in colour term semantics here. A lot of things can influence the semantic shift of a term, especially a colour term since these are among the most volatile and easily mouldable concepts in the human language it seems. Every term, even new, is practically immediately subjected to modification by all the nuances of colour (saturation, luminosity, reflection, etc.), quite apart from social influence. In 1976 Kelly & Judd (accessible on archive.org) compiled a dictionary of colour terms (based on the Munsell system) that they gathered from various sources. Like most all colour terms there are dozens of variations: Opal Mauve, Mello-Mauve, Mauve Blush, Mauve Taupe, Mauve Wine, Orchid Mauve, Pastel Mauve, Mauve Decade, et cetera et cetera, ranging from "moderate violet" to "greyish purplish red". Personally, my view of mauve is 'light violet', around or a bit lighter than the original, though when I dared to voice this view on Threads I was "corrected" (vehemently! 🤣) by someone, completely missing my point that the semantics of colour terms are, apart from the very core of each concept, extremely personal and multi-faceted. But according to them, this is mauve:
To me this is best described as sludge red (based on the two that I see as the most saturated, fourth and fifth from the right in the middle row)😝How these people came to the conclusion that this is mauve I do not know, but I am actually quite tempted to try to figure it out 😝 Then again, my data from North American and UK English do not bode well for the future of the concept of [MAUVE] 😅 US (one nomination each):
UK (one nomination each)
FWIW, "mauve" was one of the coal-tar dyes developed in the mid-19th century that made eye-wateringly bright clothing fashionable for a few decades.
It was an eye-popping magenta purple
HOWEVER, like most aniline dyes, it faded badly, to a washed-out blue-grey ...
...which was the color ignorant youngsters in the 1920s associated with “mauve”.
(This dress is labeled "mauve" as it is the color the above becomes after fading).
They colored their vision of the past with washed-out pastels that were NOTHING like the eye-popping electric shades the mid-Victorians loved. This 1926 fashion history book by Paul di Giafferi paints a hugely distorted, I would say dishonest picture of the past.
Ever since then this faded bluish lavender and not the original electric eye-watering hot pink-purple is the color associated with the word “mauve”.
