Colour...naming and perceiving

[french frank]

Nowt to do wi' topic, but I'm reminded of the beautiful (and forward looking) Woefully Arrayed by William Cornysh where the words "my body blo and wan" are set most poignantly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15YOCI2XzbM

Absolutely off-topic, arders - I do love the vivid old Englishness of the words (John Skelton).

Turquoise is sometimes referred to as 'turquoise blue': I've never heard 'turquoise green'.

[vinteuil]

Do you think of turquoise as being blue or green?

... I think of it as being turquoise; more largely I think of it as cyan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyan

[clive heath]

I recall that "wan" once meant dark, black and then suffered a metamorphosis to its present pale synonym.

Here is Maeve Maddox on the topic

"My first encounter with the word wan [wŏn)] was in the first stanza of this poem by Sir John Suckling (1609-1642):

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?

I assumed that wan must be a synonym for pale, and I thought of pale as meaning “whitish” or “ashen.”

Many years later, I read this line about the approach of Grendel in Beowulf:

Com on wanre niht scriðan sceadugenga. (line 702)

Donaldson translates wanre (wan) as “black”:

There came gliding in the black night the walker in darkness.

The literal translation is:

Came in dark night to glide the shadow-goer.

From meaning such things as “dark/lacking light,/gloomy” in Old English, wan now means

Pallid, faded, sickly; unusually or unhealthily pale. Most frequently applied to the human face. (OED)

A wan smile is “a faint or forced smile (as of one sick or unhappy).”

The adverb wanly is still used to describe a sickly or pathetic smile:

she smiled wanly at the doctor

I finished the scene and smiled wanly at the casting director.

. . . she didn’t want to deflate the delight the stranger was obviously taking in his trick, so she smiled wanly, patiently waiting"

[french frank]

'Wan' is a fascinating word! It seems that the meaning dark, lacking light (and the various colours/non-colours associated) > gloomy. So a 'wan smile' is perhaps also a 'joyless smile' (just as one speaks of a 'smile that lights up the room').

OED says it's not in other Germanic languages, but points to OIr fann, Welsh gwan as meaning faint, weak, feeble - all also applicable to a light. And possibly associated with 'to wane', not only for the moon, but 'waning interest' &c. So loss/diminution of light, colour and strength

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

clive and frenchie (posts 18 & 19) Excellent posts, many thanks.

[vinteuil]

In Old French, blo (=bleu) seems to be something like 'bruise-coloured" - blue/green/yellow/grey..

.... talking of bruise colours, how is it that "livid", which used to mean "bruise coloured, leaden blue" now seems nearly always to mean "furious, raging"?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

.... talking of bruise colours, how is it that "livid", which used to mean "bruise coloured, leaden blue" now seems nearly always to mean "furious, raging"?

Anything to do with "of the liver", meponders?

[vinteuil]

... why?

[french frank]

.... talking of bruise colours, how is it that "livid", which used to mean "bruise coloured, leaden blue" now seems nearly always to mean "furious, raging"?

Confused with e.g. 'liverish': "Having symptoms attributed to a disordered liver; producing such symptoms. In later use also: (fig.) irritable, peevish (cf. choleric adj. 5a, bilious adj. 3). Cf. livery adj. 2.

[french frank]

Confused with e.g. 'liverish': "Having symptoms attributed to a disordered liver; producing such symptoms. In later use also: (fig.) irritable, peevish (cf. choleric adj. 5a, bilious adj. 3). Cf. livery adj. 2.

Wiktionary gives lividus a secondary meaning of 'envious, invidious, spiteful, malicious'

[vinteuil]

Confused with e.g. 'liverish'...

... are you convinced by that? Me, when I'm liverish I feel gloomy, despondent, pathetic, melancholy - far from "furious, raging".

My first edn OED only refers to the colour in its definition of livid; my copy of the Supplementary Vols adds the newer meaning, with quotes from the 1900s, but no further explanation.

Am still baffled...

[french frank]

I'm not particularly convinced: I merely present a supposition The online OED goes back to 1828 for 'Most of them were coming home gouty, liverish, and bilious.' The development of 'bile'?

[ardcarp]

Going back to 'wan', our OE/ME specialist made us pronounce it to rhyme with 'ran'. Mind you, he also wanted, in Sumer is icumen in , 'lewder sing cook-ow'. Now has anyone ever heard a cuckoo sing cook-ow?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

(fig.) irritable, peevish (cf. choleric adj. 5a, bilious adj.

I had a little fit of paranoia for a moment there. (I mean - how did they know?)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... are you convinced by that? Me, when I'm liverish I feel gloomy, despondent, pathetic, melancholy - far from "furious, raging".

My first edn OED only refers to the colour in its definition of livid; my copy of the Supplementary Vols adds the newer meaning, with quotes from the 1900s, but no further explanation.

Am still baffled...

I was half-remembering Tilliard's The Elizabethan World Picture ("half-remembering" because I can't find it) in which the humour of yellow bile produced a choleric personality, easily offended and quick to anger.

But why "livid" and not "livic" (as in "splenetic" = of the spleen) gives me pause.