Which colour apparently started out to mean two other distinctly different colours, before the latest adaptation of the word today, and what were the two other colours?

shey1010

I think red. The other two colors are blue and yellow. These tri-color are being used in producing techni-color films back in the old days up to date. Apr 29 06, 1:22 AM

soonappear

I think olive, purple and green. Apr 29 06, 3:45 AM

Baloo55th

I think you mean purple. In the original days when this was very expensive, it was more a sort of rich 'purple' red or also been a rich 'purple' blue. This was dependent on the species of Murex shellfish used to produce the dye. http://www.realcolorwheel.com/murexpurple.htm which is rather technical, but readable. In more modern time, definitions of colour became more exact and important, especially with the increase in colour printing, and the term 'purple' attached itself to a mixture of red and blue. Purple is not in the spectrum, but the closely related violet is, and lilac is a sort of paler version. Apr 29 06, 6:15 AM

peasypod

Nope, nope, and nope. Think word etymology. Think Greek and Old English origins... Apr 29 06, 6:32 AM

lanfranco

I really was going to let someone else handle this one. However, since I brought up Yale Blue in another question, I might as well say that the answer is probably blue. It began as Indo-European "bhlewos," meaning yellow, which became Greek "phalos" for white ("pale" in Old English.) English more or less reclaimed the original word from French, in which it had come to mean the color we know today: http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/colour.htm Apr 29 06, 3:50 PM

peasypod

Nice One Frankie, and exactly the site I was after, too. Robboy did a nice one about the colour pink a couple years ago, can't remember what number that one was though. Apr 29 06, 6:54 PM