What I've Learned

For many years I believed that Eskimos have 50 words for snow. That idea pleased me. Snow being such an integral part of their lives, it seemed fitting they should have a name for every type and condition of the frozen, powdery white stuff.

Sadly – I'm not sure why I say sadly – it's not true.

First of all, who do we mean when we say Eskimos? There are a number of peoples who live in the frozen north, and we, in our ignorance, tend to think of them all as Eskimos.

Experts have found that none of the Eskimo–Aleut languages contain 50 or 30 or even 20 different words for snow. We in our language use adjectives to describe variations in the wintery ground cover. We say slushy snow, new snow, deep snow, powdery snow, icy snow, hard snow, fine-grained snow, large-flaked snow, and so on.

Northern peoples do the same thing within the structure of their languages. They don't have completely different words for different types of snow.

I told you that so I could tell you this.

In English, there is something we have 50 different words for. It's the color red.

There is, of course, but one word for the actual color red, but there are plenty of words for its myriad shades.

I read once that the more colors you can name, the more you can see. Not knowing one shade from another means that our vision – and our working vocabulary – is limited to red, reddish, dark red, and light red.

That's a far cry from blood red, blush, brick, burgundy, carmine, China red, cinnabar, crimson, fire engine red, flame, Indian red, madder, maroon, rose, rouge, ruby, russet, rust, scarlet, tomato, Venetian red, and vermilion, to name but a few.

I am more of an aural learner than a visual learner, so distinguishing colors – shades of red or otherwise – doesn't come easily. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to learn.

I know, for example, that China red and cinnabar are names for vermillion, and vermillion is an opaque orangish red pigment, similar to scarlet, but more orange and less red.

It is called China red because cinnabar, the naturally occurring mineral pigment that has been used for thousands of years to produce this shade, was mined in China and used as the traditional red pigment of Chinese art.

I said that vermillion is similar to scarlet, but more orange and less red. It could be said, therefore, that scarlet is similar to vermillion, but more red and less orange.

The red-orange color of fire is a medium shade of scarlet called, appropriately enough, flame.

The color that Crayola crayons calls scarlet is deeper and redder than flame and was originally called torch red.

I always have my ear out for names of colors in song lyrics. Red occurs often, such as in Paul Simon's, Red Rubber Ball ("The morning sun is shining like a ... .")

In the song, Nights in White Satin, by the Moody Blues, a poem called Late Lament is recited. Part of it says this about the moon: "Cold-hearted orb that rules the night, hides the colors from our sight. Red is gray, and yellow, white."

You may have heard Flaming Red by Patty Griffin, Lady in Red by Chris Deburgh, Red House by Jimi Hendrix, Red, Red Wine by UB40, and The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes by Elvis Costello.

Probably no lyric treats red so kindly as does Donovan Leitch's 1967 song, Wear Your Love Like Heaven, which not only has these lines: "Color in sky Prussian blue, Scarlet fleece changes hue, Crimson ball sinks from view," but these as well: "Color sky Havana lake, Color sky rose carmethene, Alizarian crimson."

Lovely.