After fabrics named after places, methods, and materials used in the manufacture of cloth, it’s time to look at colour words that denote or refer to fabrics.

Purple is one of those colour words the root of which can be traced to a type of cloth. Beige, for example, originally was not the name for a pale shade of brown, but the French name for a type of woollen fabric usually left un-dyed. Nor was scarlet, a type of high-quality cloth that may have been made first in Persia, and could have been blue or green, though it was commonly dyed red. Purple has a fascinating lexical history. The semantic changes this colour word went through were neither amelioration (words losing their original sense for a milder sense) nor pejoration (words developing a sense of disapproval), yet it reached English by a circuitous route, as we shall see.

For the nobles

There is a type of shellfish found in the Mediterranean Sea from which a blue dye called Tyrian purple (named after Tyre in Lebanon) used to be extracted in Classical Antiquity. Blue dyes were difficult to make and expensive, and still are. For example, fireworks that twinkle blue are the most expensive. It used to be incredibly expensive to make Tyrian purple—10,000 snail shells crushed to dye just one toga—and was considered so rare that in some places it was reserved for the aristocracy and royal garments. In some cultures it would have been punishable by death for someone “not of the blood of royalty” to wear purple. Greeks called this dye porphur, which was borrowed by Latin as purpure “purple garment/cloth”, from which originated the English purpul until its current spelling was first recorded in AD 975.

Purple is not the only colour word derived from things such as fish and insects. Crimson came out of Arabic qirmiz which borrowed it from Sanskrit krmi-ja, a compound meaning “(red dye) produced by a worm/insect”, from krmih “worm” + -ja- “produced”. Another red colour that got its name from worms is vermilion, from Latin vermiculus “a little worm”, specifically, the cochineal insects gathered commercially for making the dye in the Mediterranean countries.

The mix of hot red and cool blue now known as purple went through several changes of shade. The original was Tyrian purple, also called imperial purple for reasons already explained. After the fall of Western Roman Empire, Europeans began using a more bluish purple called “royal purple” because of its similarity to the “royal blue” worn by the aristocracy. Since it was formerly worn as a symbol of royalty or high office, the phrase “born to the purple” meant imperial power or high rank.

Purple’s allusion to royalty could be the reason why rhetorical and ornate writing style was at first called “purple prose”, but later became the epithet for writing that uses difficult or unusual words—in order to show disapproval. Purple speech is written using symbols #$%&@ in publications like The Hindu. Purple is the colour of mourning for widows in Thailand, of penitence (especially in royalty or clergy), and said to be the favourite colour of Cleopatra.

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,” first line of “Warning”, the celebrated poem by Jenny Joseph. In 2004, purple was selected as Word of the Year because it was used on the 2004 presidential electoral map. (Just behind was ‘wardrobe malfunction’ coined after the exposure of certain bodily parts by Janet Jackson). In the news report “Pollsters Eye ‘Purple’ Vote Up in N.H.”, The Boston Globe (July 25, 2004) explained “New Hampshire, New England’s only ‘up-for-grabs’ state, has been called a purple state for its mix of red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) voters in 2000.” In the recent presidential election in the U.S., purple was used quite frequently by the media as a synonym for a swing state: Democrats Leading McCain in “Purple” States.

To round this story of purple off, the colour represents courage in Purple Heart, the medal given to U.S. soldiers wounded in combat since 1932. It was originally a cloth decoration begun by George Washington in 1782. 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”. In Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 eponymous song, “Purple Haze” is slang for LSD and drug-induced state of confusion or euphoria.

Courtesy: http://www.hindu.com/lr/2008/12/07/stories/2008120750380800.htm