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[-] BunScientist@lemmy.zip 92 points 15 hours ago

From what I know, it has to do with the word red covering the purple part of the spectrum long ago, and the "need" for the word purple came out later but purple things that were named red didn't get renamed.

You can look at japanese right now and 青い covers both blue and green, with a relatively recent addition of 緑 to cover only green (thus possibly pushing 青い in the future to be only blue, who knows)

[-] JamieDub86@piefed.social 7 points 8 hours ago

Well whys it called Shepherds Pie when it doesnt contain shepherds, or Cottage Pie when its nothing to do with cottages or cottagimg? How about that one...checkmate!!!

[-] alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

And baby powder is never powdered babies!

Oh shit! Shouldn't have made my own. Although it is quite good sprinkled on my salad...

[-] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 19 points 12 hours ago

Similarly, the red fox is clearly orange, but English speakers were exposed to that species of fox before developing a word for that specific color. For bonus linguistical oddities, 'orange' was used for the fruit before it was used for the color.

[-] JamieDub86@piefed.social 4 points 8 hours ago

Or the red squirrel, which is brown.

[-] TisI@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 hours ago
[-] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 20 points 12 hours ago

Yes, the word for greenery/foliage, 青葉, translates to "blue leaves"

Also the green traffic light is called blue

[-] Apytele@sh.itjust.works 10 points 12 hours ago

I already knew this about colors (it's also why "redheads" have orange hair) but I recently dug more into how the musical spectrum and how tones are defined is very similar in it's cultural variance. Another thing is how the cardinal directions are divided radially and how time is counted. Shit counting bases even, most of the imperial measurements are based on either base 12 or base 16 math.

Wild to think that something you grew up with as a fundamental fact of the world might actually be super culturally subjective.

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

For bonus points, terms for colors are developed differently but similarly in separate languages: see e.g. ‘Color term’.

this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
464 points (99.2% liked)

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