27 August 2015

The Dictionary of Colours

I think shades within a colour group sometimes can be hard to nail down.
Ingrid Sundberg is a writer, and wanted to be better at describing colours in her work.

That is how "The Dictionary of Colors" became a thing on Imgur. I hunted down the owner of the pictures, as I wanted to share it with you all. If you follow me in Pinterest, you might have seen it already, as it's been saved over a 100 times!

The cool thing about this, is that it is not just genious for writers that want's to be more colorful in their novels, but it works great for us nail polish geeks for describing our nail polishes. I have also added some other words that would go in the same colour family underneath the pictures. I have to thank Once Upon A Lexicon and Wikipedia for those.

So without further ado.

Other shades of white would include: milk, chalk, oatmeal, champagne, crystal, vanilla, blonde, linen, cornsilk, honeydew, seashell, eburnean.

Other shades of tan would include: Khaki, biscuit, buff, ecru, camel, mushroom, taupe, nude, bisque, toast, dun, suede, sarcoline.

Other shades of yellow would include: sunshine, straw, goldenrod, citrine, taxi cab, sunflower, apricot yellow, jasmine, papaya whip, lemon chiffon, ecru, arylide yellow, aureole, chartreuse, jonquil, mikado.
Other shades of orange would include: Pumpkin, ocher, ginger, flame, Princeton orange, persimmon, tangelo, Portland orange, bittersweet, sunset, tawny, peach, gamboge.

Other shades of red would include: maroon, burgundy, carmine, vermilion, ruddy, henna, terracotta, poppy, tyrian red, cardinal, rust, rosso corsa, auburn, folly, redwood, vermilion, Venetian red, Tuscan red, raspberry, lava, carnelian, alizarine crimson, falu.

I want to throw something in here about the color Saffron. Originally  Once Upon A Lexicon mentioned that this was a red shade. It was first used to describe a color in England around 1200 (thank you wikipedia). Wikipedia has it listed as a golden yellow. Below I attached a color chart from Adobe Color. As you can see Saffron could below to the colour group: White, Yellow, Orange, Brown and Red. Cool right?

Source: https://color.adobe.com/Saffron-color-theme-313744/


Other shades of pink would include: peony, raspberry, roseate, cerise, puce, amaranth, brink pink, folly, thulian pink, Mountbatten pink, carnation pink, Baker-Miller pink, desire, razzmatazz.

Other shades of purple would include: pomegranate, puce, wisteria, Byzantium, fandango, heliotrope, tyrian, thistle, cherise, cattleya.

Other shades of blue would include: turquoise, aqua, cyan, ice, cornflower, majorelle blue, Bleu De France, Brandeis blue, Cambridge blue, Carolina blue, duke, federal, midnight. Prussian, phthalo blue, zaffre, Tiffany blue, viridian, denim, Celeste, glaucous, Eton blue, Columbia blue, Dodger blue, Persian blue, Oxford blue, Palitinate blue, smalt.

Other shades of green would include: Kelly, grass, leaf, apple, jade, spinach, willow, avocado, bottle green, asparagus, artichoke, mantis, forest, malachite, harlequin,  shamrock, verdigris, xanadu. 

Other shades of brown would include: earth, copper, chestnut, burnt sienna, auburn, bay, bistre, russet, sorre, beaver, burnt sienna, burnt umber, camel, cordovan, coyote, ecru, fallow, fawn, field drab, fulvous, isabelline, lion, liver, rofous, russet, sepia, sinopia, tawny, wenge, wheat, titian, wenge.

Other shades of grey would: dust, stone, granite, cement, platinum, battleship grey, Payne's grey, slate, timberwolf, gunmetal.

Other shades of black would include: licorice, raisin, outer space, bistre, eerie black, Jet black.

So there you have it, a start to better colour knowledge, and colour descriptions. I hope you enjoyed it. Most certain that there are colours missing here, but it's a great start.

Hope you enjoyed it!

1 comment:

  1. Saved as a favorite, I love your blog!

    ReplyDelete

Let me know what is on your mind, I always reply to comments and love it when you take the time to leave me one.