this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Pendants will argue that black is not a colour
Physicists might argue that, but black is a color linguistically and in common usage; I'd argue that since OP was generally speaking in a linguistic context, linguistic rules override physics pedantry.
Idk why, maybe because I'm a scientist, but this speaks to something in my soul
I thought briefly about editing that to say, "in this context", but I thought it might be redundant.
It's like the whole fruit/vegetable debate, and there not really being a scientific category of "vegetables" that aligns with the common usage. However, in common usage, the loose, lay definition of "vegetable" is far more useful than the scientific, taxonomical one.
Context is king.
Yeah. I've had this discussing with others in different forms, where they are arguing that words have specific definitions..
I would go even further.. My take is that what you said is right, but also, what a given context (like "cooking") is can be very different for different people.. So even in situations where three is really only one meaning for a word (rare, but maybe "broccoli" is an example), the word is understood differently by different people because it has different connotations attached for everyone (e.g. "I love/hate it", "my grandparent used to cook it badly").
Word definitions are like the lowest common denominator consensus version of those individual meaning, but they are changing slightly all the time as people change. Dictionaries are just documenting that evolution, but are constantly playing catch-up.
I agree with you!
This is my pet peeve, and yet I know I'm wrong. I hate Miriam Webster for being a catalog of slang; it's not a dictionary, anymore. OED is the only English dictionary. Words have meanings, despite 20% of the population misunderstanding or intentionally redefining them.
And yet, and yet... it is not possible to argue against popular usage in natural languages. The best you can do is use a conlang that enforces strict no-evolution rules, such as the stance Esperanto has traditionally taken. Or learn Volpuk, a logic based language that strives to eliminate all ambiguity and achieves only being impossible to use outside of extremely narrow circumstances, because that's not how humans think.
This is one of the great internal conflicts in my world: natural language evolves and changes, and context alters meaning even further; and yet I desire reliable definitions and disambiguity, and shudder when I see MW has added "boomer: N. An older person."
Eh, I've come to love it. Life is messy. Complexity is everywhere, and understanding of anything interesting or meaningful is always partial. Language limits (or influences) what you are able to think clearly about, so why not just let language be unlimited?
To me, this take aligns with the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi, which is about finding beauty in imperfection and decay.. Kind of a guiding aesthetic for me.
Redcurrant
Actually, the color is named after the fruit. It wasn't until the late Middle Ages that we discovered anything other than the redcurrant that was red in color. Poppies, for example, were only discovered in ~1917, and we only found out about blood in the 1970s.
Are you seriously trying to claim that no human ever bled and saw the colour until the 1970s? LOL
Lol no. They are entirely taking the piss.
If their piss is red they need to go to the doctor as per this shart
I have tetrachromacy and piss in colors that would drive most into madness.
Look out, it's the mad pisser!!!
A chart made by someone that's never eaten a whole bag of beet chips in one sitting, I see.
I think you misunderstand. If you've eaten a whole bag of beet chips you should see the doctor.
Dear Mr Encyclopedia, when were raspberries discovered? Wasn't Avalon "the isle of apples?" When did Christian bibles start describing the forbidden fruit as "apples?" Were they not red apples?
What color did they call ripe ribe avu-crispa (a gooseberry)?
The Biblical fruit is just given as "pərî" and could be any fruit. Avalon is from the Welsh aflonydd, "peaceful", so named because it was King Arthur's vacation spot. Raspberries have not yet been discovered, at time of writing.
I tried to be careful about the biblical reference. It's been translated as "apple" since at least the 12th century CE.
The biblical comment was not to argue that the Torah said "apple", but that it has been translated as "apple" for centuries, demonstrating that the apple has been a commonly known fruit in Britain for a long time; and that ripe apples are frequently red.
Apple (malum) was used of the fruit from the 12th Century or thereabouts in ecclesiastical Latin, but the first known red apple is recorded only in the mid-17th Century, when an apple fell on Isaac Newton's head and turned bright red in embarrassment.
The trend presumably picked up from there - c.f. the popularity of rouge in the French court.
You got me.
Fuck.
Greengages.
Hah! Why do we call black people coloured people then!
Checkmate blackisnotacolorists!
One might ask Crayola.