thumb.
Purple
is a general term used in English for the range of shades of color occurring between red and blue. [1] In additive light combinations it occurs by mixing the primary colors red and blue in varying proportions. In subtractive pigments it can be equal to the primary color magenta or be formed by mixing magenta with the secondary colors red or blue, or by mixing just the latter two, in which case a color of low saturation will result. Low saturation will also be caused by adding a certain quantity of the third primary color (green for light or yellow for pigment). There is a disagreement over exactly which shades can be described as purple, some people preferring more precise terms such as magenta or heliotrope for particular shades. A difference in retinal sensitivity to red and blue light between individuals can cause further disagreement.
In color theory, a "purple" is defined as any non-spectral color between violet and red (excluding violet and red themselves). [2] The spectral colors violet and indigo are not purples according to color theory but they are purples according to common English usage since they are between red and blue.
In art, purple is the color on the color wheel between magenta and violet and its tints and shades. This color, electric purple, is shown below. [3]
In human color psychology, purple is also associated with royalty and nobility (stemming from classical antiquity when Tyrian Purple was only affordable to the elites).
|
PURPLE TICKETS
|
Etymology and definitions
thumb or
spiny dye-murex
The word 'purple' comes from the
Old English word
purpul
which originates from the
Latin purpura.
This in turn is derived from the
Koine Greek p??f??a (
porphyra
), name of the
dye manufactured in classical antiquity from the mucus-secretion of the hypobranchial gland of a marine
snail known as the
Murex brandaris
or the
spiny dye-murex
.
[4]
The first recorded use of the word 'purple' in English was in the year AD 975.
[5]
Purple versus violet
Violet is a
spectral color (approximately 380-420 nm), of a shorter wavelength than
blue, while purple is a combination of
red and
blue or violet light.
[6] The purples are colors that are not
spectral colors – purples are extra-spectral colors. In fact, purple was not present on
Newton's color wheel (which went directly from violet to red), though it is on modern ones, between red and violet. There is no such thing as the "wavelength of purple light"; it only exists as a combination.
[2]
right
On the
CIE xy chromaticity diagram, violet is on the curved edge in the lower left, while purples are the straight line connecting the extreme colors red and violet; this line is known as the line of purples, or the purple line.
[8] [9]
One interesting
psychophysical feature of the two colors that can be used to separate them is their appearance with increase of
light intensity. Violet, as light intensity increases, appears to take on a far more blue hue as a result of what is known as the
Bezold-Brücke shift. The same increase in blueness is not noted in purples.
Pure violet cannot be reproduced by a Red-Green-Blue (RGB) color system, but it can be approximated by mixing blue and red. The resulting color has the same
hue but a lower
saturation than pure violet.
Properties
On a
chromaticity diagram, the straight line connecting the extreme spectral
colors (red and violet) is known as the 'line of purples' (or 'purple boundary'); it represents one limit of
human color perception. The color magenta used in the
CMYK printing process is on the line of purples, but most people associate the term "purple" with a somewhat
bluer shade. Some common confusion exists concerning the
color names "purple" and "violet". Purple is a mixture of red and blue light, whereas violet is a
spectral
color.
Historical development of purple
Tyrian purple: Classical antiquity
thumb clad in Tyrian purple, 6th-century mosaic at
Basilica of San Vitale
The actual color of
Tyrian purple
, the original color purple from which the name purple is derived, is the color of a dye made from a
mollusk that in classical antiquity became a symbol of
royalty because only the very wealthy could afford it. Therefore, Tyrian purple is also called
imperial purple
.
Tyrian purple may have been discovered as early as the time of the
Minoan civilization.
Alexander the Great (when giving imperial audiences as the
emperor of the
Macedonian Empire), the emperors of the
Seleucid Empire, and the
kings of
Ptolemaic Egypt wore Tyrian purple. The imperial robes of
Roman emperors were Tyrian purple trimmed in metallic
gold thread. The badge of office of a
Roman Senator was a stripe of Tyrian purple on their white
toga.
[10] Tyrian purple was continued in use by the emperors of the
Eastern Roman Empire until
its final collapse in 1453.
Han purple: Ancient China
Han purple
is a type of artificial
pigment found in China between 500
BC and
AD 220. It was used in the decoration of the
Xian Terracotta Army.
thumb cultivars can appear as han purple in direct sunlight.
Royal purple: Medieval Europe
This shade of purple is bluer than the ancient Tyrian purple.
In
medieval Europe, blue dyes were rare and expensive,
[11] so only the most wealthy or the
aristocracy could afford to wear them. (The
working class wore mainly
green and
brown.) Because of this (and also because Tyrian purple had gone out of use in
western Europe after the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire in AD 476), Europeans' idea of purple shifted towards this more bluish purple known as
royal purple
because of its similarity to the
royal blue worn by the aristocracy. This was the shade of purple worn by
kings in
medieval Europe.
Artists' pigment purple (red-violet): 1930s
'Royal purple' (shown above) or the dark violet color known as vulgar purple is the common layman's idea of purple, but professional
artists, following
Munsell color system (introduced in 1905 and widely accepted by 1930), regard purple as being synonymous with the
red-violet color shown at right, in order to clearly distinguish purple from
violet and thus have access to a larger palette of colors. This
red-violet
color, called
artist's purple
by artists, is the pigment color that would be on a pigment color
color wheel between pigment
violet and pigment (process)
magenta. In the Munsell color system, this color at the maximum chroma of 12 is called Red-Purple.
Artists' pigments and colored
pencils labeled as purple are colored the red-violet color shown at right.
Electric purple: 2000s
This color,
electric purple
, is precisely halfway between violet and magenta and thus fits the artistic definition of purple.
[12]
Using additive colors such as those on computer screens, it is possible to create a much brighter purple than with pigments where the mixing subtracts frequencies from the component primary colors. The equivalent color on a computer to the pigment color red-violet shown above would be this electric purple, i.e. the much brighter purple you can see reproduced on the screen of an
electronic computer. This color is pure purple conceived as
computer artists conceive it, as the pure
chroma on the
computer screen color wheel halfway between electric violet and electric magenta. Thus, electric purple is the purest and brightest purple that it is possible to display on a computer screen.
Computer web color purples
Purple (HTML/CSS color)
This purple used in
HTML and
CSS actually is deeper and has a more reddish hue (#800080) than the
X11 color purple shown below as
purple
(X11 color) (#A020F0), which is bluer and brighter.
This color may be called
HTML/CSS purple
.
Purple (X11 color)
At right is displayed the color purple, as defined in the
X11 color, which is a lot brighter and bluer than the
HTML purple shown above.
See the chart
Color names that clash between X11 and HTML/CSS in the X11 color names article to see those colors which are different in HTML and X11.
This color can be called
X11 purple
.
Medium purple (X11)
Displayed at right is the web color
medium purple
.
This color is a medium shade of the bright
X11 purple
shown above.
Additional variations of purple
Orchid
left
The color
orchid
is a light shade of purple. The name 'orchid' originates from the flowers of some species of the vast
orchid flower family, such as
Laelia furfuracea
and
Ascocentrum pusillum
, which have petals of this color.
Heliotrope
left
The color
heliotrope
is a brilliant shade of purple.
Heliotrope is a
pink-purple
tint that is a representation of the
color of the
heliotrope flower.
Psychedelic purple
The pure essence of purple was approximated in pigment in the late 1960s by mixing
fluorescent magenta and fluorescent blue pigments together to make
fluorescent purple
to use in
psychedelic black light paintings. This shade of purple was very popular among
hippies and was the favorite color of
Jimi Hendrix, therefore it is called
psychedelic purple
. It is shaded somewhat more toward the magenta than electric purple.
In the 1980s there was a
Jimi Hendrix Museum
in a
Victorian house on the east side of Central Ave. one half block south of Haight Street in the
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of
San Francisco which was painted this color.
Mulberry
The color
mulberry
is displayed at right. This color is a representation of the color of
mulberry jam or
pie. This was a
Crayola crayon color from 1958 to 2003.
The first recorded use of Mulberry as a color name in English was in 1776.
[14]
Pansy purple
thumb
The
pansy flower has varieties that exhibit three different colors: pansy (a deep shade of violet), pansy pink, and
pansy purple
.
The first recorded use of Pansy Purple as a color name in English was in 1814.
[15]
Purple in nature
Plants
- Purple needlegrass is the state grass of California.
Animals
- The purple frog is a new species of amphibian discovered in India in 2003.
- Purple Honeycreeper
Purple in human culture
Academic Dress
- In the French academic dress system, the five traditional fields of study (Arts, Science, Medicine, Law and Divinity) are each symbolized by a distinctive color, which appears in the academic dress of the people who graduated in this field. Purple (usually a hue close to Royal Purple) is the distinctive color for Divinity. It is also worn by high academic officials (University President, Head of Faculty, Rector, etc.) regardless of the field in which they graduated.
Anti-apartheid movement
- The Purple Rain Protest was a protest against apartheid that took place in Cape Town, South Africa on September 2, 1989, in which a police water cannon with purple dye sprayed thousands of demonstrators. This led to the slogan The purple shall govern
.
Astronomy
- One of the stars in the Pleiades, called Pleione, is sometimes called Purple Pleione because, being a fast spinning star, it has a purple hue caused by its blue-white color being obscured by a spinning ring of electrically excited red hydrogen gas. [16]
Billiard games
- Purple is the color of the ball in Snooker Plus with a 10-point value.
- In the game of pool, purple is the color of the 4-solid and the 12-striped balls.
Calendars
- Purple is associated with Saturday on the Thai solar calendar. Anyone may wear purple on Saturdays and anyone born on a Saturday may adopt purple as their color.
Comedy
- The Purple Onion is a celebrated comedy club in the North Beach area of San Francisco, California. [17]
Dance
- The Purple Moon Dance Project
is a dance group in San Francisco. [18]
Geography
- Purple Mountain is located on the eastern side of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China. Its peaks are often found enveloped in mysterious purple clouds at dawn and dusk, hence comes its name "Purple Mountain".
Heraldry
thumb of the
Kingdom of León
- Porpora, or purpure, was not one of the usual tinctures in European heraldry, being added at a late date to bring the number of colors plus metals to seven, so that they could be given planetary associations. The classic early example of purpure is in the coat of arms of the Kingdom of León: argent, a lion purpure, as early as 1245.
History
- Byzantine empresses gave birth in the Purple Chamber of the palace of the Byzantine Emperors. Therefore, being named Porphyrogenitus ("born to the purple") marked a dynastic emperor as opposed to a general who won the throne by his effort.
- In China, the Chinese name of the Forbidden City literally means "purple forbidden city" ??? with first character ? meaning purple (even though the Chinese Emperor himself wore yellow, which was considered in China to be the imperial color).
Holocaust
- The purple triangle was a Nazi concentration camp badge used by the Nazis to identify several un-orthodox non-conformist religious groups known as Bibelforscher, mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses. [19]
Literature
- Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple,
said, "Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender."
- As a result of its association with royalty and luxury, the term purple
is often used to describe pretentious or overly embellished literature. For example, a paragraph containing an excessive number of long and unusual words is called a purple passage (see Purple prose).
Microbiology
- In April 2007 it was suggested that early archaea may have used retinal, a purple pigment, instead of chlorophyll, to extract energy from the sun. If so, large areas of the ocean and shoreline would have been colored purple; this is called the Purple Earth hypothesis. [20]
Military
- In the United States and United Kingdom militaries, purple
refers to programs or assignments that are "joint", i. e., that are not confined to a single service such as the Army or Navy, but apply to the entire defense establishment. Assignment to one or more joint billets is required for promotion to flag rank (Rear Admiral and higher) in the U.S. Navy. Officers in joint billets are sometimes referred to as "wearing purple" (the phrase is purely metaphorical as there are no purple uniforms in the U.S. armed forces or UK armed forces).
- During and before World War II, the Japanese used a code known as PURPLE or the Purple Code. The Allies' military successes in the Pacific theater depended on the fact that the Japanese did not know that Allied cryptographers had broken the code.
- The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President of the United States to those who have been wounded or killed while serving on or after April 5, 1917 with the U.S. military.
Mourning
- In 16th century England, purple was the color for the final stage of mourning, according to Mark Twain in his first attempt at historical fiction, "The Prince and the Pauper". [21]
Music
- Deep Purple is a popular rock band. [22]
- "Deep Purple" (song) is also the name of a popular song that was the favorite song of Babe Ruth.
- Purple are a British tribute band to Deep Purple.
- The Mulberry Purple is a popular Modern Rock band.
- "Purple People Eater" was one of the biggest rock and roll hits of 1958. [23]
- "Purple Haze" is one of the most popular songs by Jimi Hendrix.
- "Tha Purple" is a song performed by the duo Pablo and Victor.
- Purple is the favorite color of the pop celebrity Prince. His 1984 film and album Purple Rain
is one of his best known works. The title track is Prince's signature song and is nearly always played in concert to this day. Prince encourages his fans to wear purple to his concerts. [24]
- "Start Wearing Purple" is a song by Gogol Bordello.
- Purple Ribbon Records is a hip-hop record label owned by rapper Big Boi of the rap duo Outkast. 2005 saw the release of the mixtape Got Purp? Vol 2
featuring the Purple Ribbon All-Stars and other artists on the label. In this case, purple refers to a particular quality of marijuana.
- Purple
is a 1994 album by the band Stone Temple Pilots.
- Purple
is also the name of a track by rap artist Nas.
- Purple Music, Inc
is a company in Switzerland that produces house music. [25]
- The New Riders of the Purple Sage is an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco in 1969, and its original lineup included members of the Grateful Dead.
- "The Purple Bottle" is a song by Animal Collective.
Oenology
- There is a winemaker in the Napa Valley of Northern California named Alex Cose who is with a company called the Purple Wine Co.
that specializes in the production of wines for restaurants that is poured by the glass. [26]
Parapsychology
- People with purple auras are said to have a love of ritual and ceremony. [27]
Politics
- In British politics, purple is used to represent the United Kingdom Independence Party, a eurosceptic party wanting to pull Britain out of the European Union.
- In the politics of the Netherlands, purple ("paars" in Dutch) means a government coalition of right-liberals and socialists (symbolized by blue and red, respectively), as opposed to the more common coalitions of the Christian-democratic center-party with one of the other two. From 1994 to 2002 there have been two purple cabinets.
- In United States politics, a purple state
is a state equally balanced between Republicans (currently symbolized by red) and Democrats (currently symbolized as blue)
:see:
red states and blue states.
Religious text
- In the Byzantine Empire, Gospel manuscripts were written in gold lettering on parchment that was colored Tyrian purple. [28]
Rhyme
- Few, if any words used in modern English rhyme with the word "purple."
- Robert Burns rhymes purple with "curple" in his Epistle to Mrs. Scott. Burns is, as far as we can tell, the only writer to have used the word. A curple refers to 1) the small of the waist before the flare of the hips or 2) a derriere, rump or behind.
- In the song Grace Kelly by Mika the word purple is rhymed with "hurtful".
- In his hit song "Dang Me," Roger Miller sings these lines:
:: ''
Roses are red,
violets are purple
: Sugar is sweet and so is maple surple
[sic]''
Sexuality
- Today the color purple is also known as a "pride" color among the gay community.
- At the 24 June 2007 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, Yahoo passed out 3 7/16" in diameter round plastic stickers with a picture of a gay man or woman imaged as one of the Yahoo Gay Pride avatars against an HTML/CSS Purple background that said Out, Proud, and Purple
. [29]
- In the mid 1970s, there was a gay piano bar at 2223 Market St. between Noe and Castro in San Francisco called the Purple Pickle
. [30]
- The purple hand is an LGBT symbol that derives from an incident which occurred on Halloween night (31 October), 1969, when sixty members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) staged a protest at the San Francisco Examiner
in response to a series of news articles disparaging LGBT people in San Francisco's gay bars and clubs.
Science fiction
- In the Star Trek universe, Klingons have purple blood. [31]
Sports
- The National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings use purple as their primary color, though the Lakers formerly used the term "Forum Blue", in reference to their old arena The Forum. The National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings use purple as one of their primary colors. In Major League Baseball, purple is one of the primary colors for the Colorado Rockies. In the National Football League, the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens use purple as main colors. The Australian Football League's Fremantle Dockers use purple as one of their primary colors. In Association football (Soccer) Australian A-League Club Perth Glory use purple as one of their primary colors and Italian Serie A club Fiorentina use purple as their primary color. In the NCAA, the LSU Tigers primary team colors are purple and gold. Royal Purple is also one of the official colors of East Carolina University.
Transpersonal psychology
- In 1976, a chart by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson called The Periodic Table of Energy
outlining the philosophy of Dr. Timothy Leary (The Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness) [32]was given out by the Starflight Network
, a group in Berkeley, California that was founded by Robert Anton Wilson to promulgate Dr. Timothy Leary's philosophy. The Eighth or Psycho-Atomic
Circuit was represented on the chart by the color psychedelic purple
. [33]
Transportation planning
- The Purple Line is a subway that goes down part of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles that it has been proposed be extended all the way down Wilshire Boulevard to the Pacific Ocean.
See also
- List of colors
- Purpure
- Violet (color)
References
- Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief ''Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary'' Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.:1984--Merriam-Webster Page 957
- Physics in the Arts
- Graham, Lanier F. (editor) ''The Rainbow Book'' Berkeley, California: Shambhala Publications and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (1976) (Handbook for the Summer 1976 exhibition ''The Rainbow Art Show'' which took place primarily at the De Young Museum but also at other museums) Portfolio of color wheels by famous theoreticians—see Rood color wheel (1879) Page 93
- Online Etymology Dictionary
- Oxford English Dictionary, second edition
- A Text-book of Physics
- Physics in the Arts
- Digital video and HDTV
- Handbook of Optoelectronics
- Tyrian Purple in Ancient Rome:
- Varichon, Anne ''Colors: What They Mean and How to Make Them'' New York:2006 Abrams Page 161
- Graham, Lanier F. (editor) ''The Rainbow Book'' Berkeley, California:1976 Shambala Publishing and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Handbook for the Summer 1976 exhibition ''The Rainbow Art Show'' which took place primarily at the De Young Museum but also at other museums) Portfolio of color wheels by famous theoreticians—see Rood color wheel (1879) Page 93 Purple is halfway between magenta and violet
- W3C TR CSS3 Color Module, HTML4 color keywords
- Maerz and Paul ''A Dictionary of Color'' New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 199; Color Sample of Mulberry: Page 119 Plate 48 Color Sample E9
- Maerz and Paul ''A Dictionary of Color'' New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 201; Color Sample of Pansy Purple: Page 131 Plate 54 Color Sample L8
- Barnett, Lincoln and the editorial staff of Life ''The World We Live In'' New York:1955--Simon and Schuster--Page 284
- Home page for The Purple Onion:
- Purple Moon Dance Project website:
- Bibelforshcer—The German name for “Jehovah’s Witnesses”:
- Early Earth Was Purple, Study Suggests:
- Twain, Mark,"The Prince and the Pauper", ISBN 0 14 04.3669 3, Penguin Books, 1997, p.71.
- Official Deep Purple website
- Lyrics and audio recording of the song Purple People Eater:
- Purple website for Prince fans:
- Purple Music, Inc (Producers of House Music):
- The Purple Pinot Maker:
- Swami Panchadasi ''The Human Aura: Astral Colors and Thought Forms'' Des Plaines, Illinois, USA:1912--Yogi Publications Society Page 37
- Varichon, Anne ''Colors:What They Mean and How to Make Them'' New York:2006 Abrams Page 140 – This information is in the caption of a color illustration showing an 8th Century manuscript page of the Gospel of Luke written in gold on Tyrian purple parchment.
- Yahoo Gay Pride Avatars:
- ''San Francisco Frontiers Gay Newsmagazine'' Volume 15, Issue 4 June 20, 1996 Gay Pride Issue Pages 38-39 ''Can You Remember When?'' ''The List'' --List of Every Gay Bar that Ever Existed in San Francisco
- Berman, Rick and Braga, Brannan (Creators of ''Star Trek: Enterprise'') editors ''Glass Empires'' (Three Tales of the Mirror Universe--''Age of the Empress'' by Karen Ward and Kevin Dilmore Story by Mike Sussman ; ''Sorrows of Empire'' by David Mack; ''The Worst of Both Worlds'' by Greg Cox) New York:2007 Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Trade Paperback) Page 363
- ''Leary’s 8 Calibre Brain'' Psychic Magazine April 1976
- A black and white copy of the chart may be found at the front of the following book: Leary, Timothy - "Info-Psychology", New Falcon Publications. ISBN 1-56184-105-6