Russett, Rose, and Raspberry: The Development of English Secondary Color Terms

Abstract

English simplex secondary color terms such as russett and rose first entered the language in the late Middle English period (1350–1500). All were innovated by means of the ontological metonymy "Entity stands for entity's color." Specific examples are: Rose stands for rose's color, and raspberry for raspberry's color. This metonym is an embodied cognitive structure based on experience with physical entities and their associated colors. Colorant and textile names such as russet, crimson, and scarlet were the earliest secondary color terms innovated. They referred to ingredients and products of color processing and, thus, were proximate entities that culture members could readily use as sources for new color terms.

Objects as culture‐specific referents of color terms in Russian

“…Note that such division into semantic categories is not exclusive to Russian. Similar classes and categories of objects are semantically well justified and defined, to our knowledge, also in English, German, Polish, and Ukrainian…”

“…Description of color by means of naming objects, which possess this color, is a universal feature of existing languages . Color names develop metonymically, whereby “Entity stand for entity's color”, quoting Casson . The phenomenon can be illustrated by English adjectives gold (made of gold) and golden (appearing made of gold) and numerous non‐basic color terms such as rose , flesh , peach , maroon or, in German, by reseda “mignonette”, türkis “turquoise”, aubergine “eggplant”…”

“…Following the pioneer work on color terms and concepts and development of prototype theory by Rosch (Heider), the structure of semantic categories of color names is known to be differential, with the explicit nucleus, the prototype, and the periphery, with members varying in the degree of their similarity to the prototype. The category periphery is organized in a looser way and constantly grows by adding new referents—“marketing” colors formed on the basis of prototypes, comparisons with, for instance, new food items, exotic flowers and animals, spices and fruit, construction and building materials …”

Two kinds of pink: development and difference in Germanic colour semantics

“…The Renaissance colour explosion (Casson, 1994) resulted in several waves of colour terms spreading across Europe. In the second wave, the chemistry of dye experimentation and the availability of more easily dyed fabric led to the presence of stable colours (reproduced in the same way more or less every time) in the lives of Europeans.…”

“…This led to an "explosion of colour" in the next few centuries in Europe (see also Gage, 1993, p. 131). The Renaissance was a technological and conceptual watershed in the history of visuality in European social life and the way in which the colour feature "hue" gained prominence over the feature "lightness" can be clearly seen in the evolution of the English colour lexicon (Casson, 1994). 2 For Casson there is a strong link between conceptual innovation and the evolution of word meanings.…”