The seven colors of the rainbow, according to Sir Isaac Newton, according to Crayola.

Try rereading the texts with red tulips instead. (Oh, and ignore the thorns. That’s also likely a mistranslation.)

Writing about Tulipmania this week and I think that vanitas is very relevant to understanding it. Newsletter coming out Tuesday (think).

Because if I were in the mood to nitpick, I’d point out that she was singing about buying ribbons to embroider a trousseau, with “pompon” flowers.

The way to make bleuets or roses is to use « ruban rose ou bleu » (rose or blue ribbons).

I’ve decided not to go down a rabbithole about how Victor Hugo’s English translator (Charles Wilbour) mistranslated Fantine’s lullaby:

« Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses son roses
Les bleuets sont bleus, j’aime mes amours. »

“Violets are blue, roses are red
Violets are blue, I love my loves.”

Take the Swedish kalkon (Kolkata, ie, a city in India).

In a 1744 Swedish -Latin dictionary, it includes a form kalkontopp, which would mean “blue-topped”.

To go down a related rabbithole, you can read more about turkeys in my free newsletter: newsletter.colorphilia.com/the-true-mea...)

Blue seems to be a color which has overrepresented shades in geographic names, either because of similar sounding words or because the shade originated there.

Egyptian, French, Venetian, Prussian, to name a few more.

Two 18c. flower names were the Peruvian Hyacinth and the Byzantine Hyacinth.

Turquoise does not have any relation to the country.

Most translations of turkey correspond with various contemporaneous blue shades in the originating countries.

Look at a chart I recently saw online about words for turkey, and compare to a bunch of geographic blues in the next post.

It’s fascinating how some Germans perceive my gender identity with the name Ezra.

I was referred to as a Frau Butler in a response from a foundation, and I want to reply, “Nein, Frau Butler ist meine Mutter. Ich bin nur Ezra.” (No, Mrs Butler is my mother. I’m just Ezra.)

But I’m just thankful.

The “moon” entry in the Farmer & Henley “Dictionary of Slang & Colloquial English” (1905) really takes you on a journey.

Help, I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, and have discovered an absurd mistranslation in the aptly-named 1555 papal bill by Pope Paul IV, “Cum nimis absurdum”.

In my defense, I'm a huge fan of absurdity, but not one of bigotry of any sort. And I was trying to research a certain flower, not religion.

And even “drowning in red ink” wasn’t always what it means now.

It got the really negative connotation in the 1980s.

newsletter.colorphilia.com/spilled-red-...

Please consider this my petition to bring back the phrase “pot-companion”.

From Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary (Oxford, 1882)

#etymology

But this led me down a little rabbit hole to find a fascinating little chapter in “Arcane America” comparing the lives and graves of Edgar Allen Poe and John Wilkes Booth.

Which, in my opinion, is the only time to use the phrase “as the raven flies”.

While a majority of the sources I found simply interchange the raven with the crow, a few texts seem to focus on either height or sheer airspeed, and not directionality.

The general consensus is that “as the raven flies” is synonymous with “as the crow flies”, but that lacks nuance.

The raven is associated with wandering and being distracted (or even, being mad), and is the biblical bird of choice for the one who doesn’t return.

#linguistics #research #rabbithole