Tinted Truth

At Oddee, we find some color names that we may not have known about. More than the good old standbyes like blue, green, yellow; more than the slightly out there ones like mauve, puce or maroon -- these are really wacky.

I have to confess I'd run across the word "malachite" before, although I thought it was just a name of a mineral. I didn't realize it's also the name of a particular shade of green. Some are recent inventions, named in modern times, like "razzmatazz." Crayon scientists put together this particular shade of reddishness in the 1990s and it was named by then 5-year-old Laura Bartolomei-Hill, who won a contest. "Gamboge" is older, a name for a dark spicy mustard that traces back to the 17th century.

In part two we encounter "Drunk-Tank Pink." You might think this is the color of the elephants seen by the residents of such rooms, but it's actually a shade painted in holding cells because it has calming effects.

I don't know who decided what order to list these colors, but they made an excellent choice in the middle of page one. First we have "United Nations Blue," which is a shade of that color specifically designated for that moribund money pit. We're told it's similar to the "Dodger blue" of the Los Angeles baseball team, but "not as vibrant," and I think someone's just trying to get me to like them. The real kicker is that UN Blue appears right below "Caput Mortuum," a shade of purplish-brown seen as iron rusts. The literal translation of the Latin is "worthless remains" or "dead head," which seems to match the UN quite well also.