Color Me Curious Trivia Quiz

Answer: fruit

Orange, the color, derives from the description of the citrus fruit we call oranges. The orange fruit is one of the most widely cultivated and ancient of the fruit trees. Historians believe that the first oranges were cultivated in Southeast Asia around 2500-3000 B.C. years ago and were spread across the ancient world. The English word "orange" comes from the Sanskrit word naranga and the Arabic word naranja both meaning the orange tree. In some European languages there is a difference between the word for the fruit and color. In German, for example, an orange fruit is called an apfelsine (apple from China) while the word for the color is orange.

Orange is part of the color spectrum between red and yellow. In its simplest form orange can be created by mixing one part red with one part yellow. In addition to the orange fruit itself, the color orange abounds in nature. Pumpkins, peaches, and carrots are some of the popular fruits and vegetables that are colored orange. These plants get their orange color from high levels of carotene pigments in the plant's cells. Carotenes are highly prized as a source of both antioxidants and anti-carcinogens.

Answer: Lemons are yellow and look tasty but are sour

The connection between the color yellow and the trait of cowardice and untrustworthiness in Western cultures extends to antiquity. However, the fact that lemons are both yellow and sour does not appear relevant to the linking of the color to the trait. Greek and thereafter Roman doctors correlated the color of certain bodily fluids with their impact on the body. The Greek physician Hippocrates described that the body was regulated by four main liquids (humors) red blood, yellow bile, black bile and greenish phlegm (green bile). Yellow bile was associated with the delightful images of moist sickness, fever, diarrhea and oozing pus. A person with an imbalance of too much yellow bile was thought to be weak in both mind and body.

Judas Iscariot is perhaps the ultimate symbol of cowardice and treachery in Western culture. The fact that Judas was often painted wearing yellow is one of the significant reasons there is a connection between the color and the negative trait. Anti-Semitics, long before the Nazi's, used yellow stars to brand Jews as undesirables. The correlation between the color yellow to those of Asian descent is a more recent phenomenon stemming from the 18th and 19th century.

Answer: The Battle of Magenta

Magenta takes its name from the Battle of Magenta that occurred during the Franco-Austrian War (also called the Second War for Italian Independence) in May-June 1859. French and Sardinian forces defeated an Austrian army near the Italian town of Magenta in the Lombardy region. The victory forced the Austrians to leave the entire North of Italy open to French and Sardinian forces culminating in the Sardinian King (and future King of a United Italy) Victor Emmanuel II occupying Milan by June 8th. The resulting peace treaty in 1860 formed the backbone for the creation of a unified modern Italy and the French investing the Savoy area and the city of Nice.

But what does the fight for Italian independence have to do with naming a dark purple-red pigment color? That answer has much to with both the history of chemical pigments and the power of marketing. In 1856, Englishman William Perkin used the chemical aniline to create a soluble textile dye called mauvine. The marketing of mauvine dye and the success of the new color (yep you guessed it) mauve spurred others to experiment with aniline compounds. In 1859, French chemist Francois-Emmanuel Verguin used aniline to create a dark purple-red dye he first called "fuschine" after the floral color fuchsia. When the dye was marketed to capitalize on a waive of Italian/French patriotism, the name was changed to magenta.

Answer: Latin for beyond the sea

The classic blue of ultramarine pigment was made from a powder created from the lapis lazuli stone. Lapis stone was in medieval times, as it is today, relatively rare and expensive. The major lapis mines producing the pulverized powder were found in Afghanistan and Persia and were imported by Italian and other European merchants. The lapis powder was called "ultramarine" which means beyond the sea in Latin.

During the Middle Ages, lapis pigment was one of the most, if not the most, expensive pigments for a painter to obtain. Thus, only the most exalted of figures would be adorned in the ultramarine color. For many artists, the color was reserved for the depiction of the garments of the Virgin Mary. As such, ultramarine and by extension blue colors in general are associated with loyalty, humility and honor. A classic use of ultramarine in a nonreligious work is in Jan Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl" where the headdress of the subject girl is a dazzling ultramarine.

Answer: Flea

Why were the French crushing fleas you ask? To start, puce, the color is a dark red/purple with a brownish tinge. The color apparently matched the stains left by blood engorged fleas that were crushed on the pillows of 18th and 19th Century French sleepers. While there is no evidence of the puce dye color being made from actual crushed fleas, the association of the color to the insect caused the color to be called "puce", the same word in French for flea. Marie Antoinette was reported to be a fan of puce though no pictures or evidence confirms the statement. Accounts from the time period do confirm that the color was considered highly fashionable amongst French nobility in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

There are also a number of French connections (pun intended) between the flea, red colors and sexual metaphors. French poetry often described virginity as "la pucelle" and the taking of the virginity as "depuceler". The flea's sucking of blood is often depicted in literature of the time as an intimate act akin to intercourse. This connection is carried over to English and is best expressed in the scandalous 1887 novel "The Autobiography of a Flea". The book's narrator in this tale of sexual debauchery in Victorian London is an intelligent and (apparently) quite literate flea.

Answer: Liquor

In around 1737 the good monks of the Roman Catholic Carthusian Order began making a green liquor that was allegedly from a secret recipe so complicated it requires over 130 ingredients. The alcohol was distilled in the Order's Grande Chartreuse monastery near the town of Voiron in the Chartreuse Mountains of southern France.

The monks sold their green colored liquor simply labeled as "Chartruese". Chartreuse was both highly prized and sold in limited quantities adding to its allure. Over time the color of the liquid and by extension any similarly situated color became known as chartreuse. Chartreuse, which means "charter house" in French was added as to the Crayola crayon box in 1972.

Answer: Named for gemstones

Similar to the naming of colors by their association to plants, many colors are named because of their resemblance to gemstones. Malachite is a deep rich green stone that is a form of copper carbonate. Aquamarine is a light blue/green beryl stone. Aquamarine is Latin for water of the sea, and both the stone and later the color depicted by the stone evoke the coloring of clear water. Turquoise is a compound mineral that forms from the combination of acidified phosphorus, copper (such as malachite) and aluminum (stone such as feldspar). Turquoise is a light blue and green color that has adorned jewelry and been used in building materials for over three thousand years. The name "turquoise" is from the French word for Turkish since it was Turkish merchants that first brought the stone from Asia to Europe in the 16th Century.

The image is a picture of the Dom Pedro Aquamarine at the US Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The giant gem is 10,363 carats and is considered the largest aquamarine gem ever cut. The gem was mined in Brazil and named for that countries first two emperors. The gem was acquired and then donated to the Smithsonian.

Answer: Nothing

The familiar phrases to maroon or be marooned stem unfortunately from the 16th-18th Century slave trade in the West Indies. A portion of African slaves kidnapped and sent to the Americas escaped and joined native populations or in some rare cases where a group of slaves escaped formed settlements of their own. The escaped slaves came to be called by the Spanish word cimarrones (feral or wild ones). Cimarrones settlements were isolated and often in hard to reach locations to protect the "fugitive" people from being recaptured by slavers. The word cimarrones was anglicized to maroon. Thus to be made a maroon or to go to a Maroon settlement became "marooning". Eventually, the meaning of the phrase turned from settling with the Maroon people, and became a reference to any person who is left in a hard to reach place.

The color maroon has a completely separate entomology. In French "maroon" refers to a chestnut. The color is a dark red mixed with browns and first started appearing in England in the 1780s. Maroon is the color of the robes for the Vajrayana Buddhist Monks including the Dalai Lama.

Answer: Perfume

In the 1930s, European women's fashion design was dominated by Coco Chanel and her Italian rival Elsa Schiaparelli. Chanel is famous for her "little black dress" and smart clean design lines. Schiaparelli's designs were more avante garde and daring and were influenced by Salvador Dali and the dada and surrealist art movements. Schiaparelli loved to design using vibrant bold colors. A favorite color for use in her designs was a pink color she termed "shocking pink". However, the name "shocking pink" does not simply come from the brightness of the pink, but rather was originally the name of a perfume created by Schiaparelli.

Schiaparelli's pink variant was inspired by a giant 17 carat pink diamond called the Ram's Head that she saw displayed by the famous jeweler Cartier. In 1937, when Schiaparelli introduced a new perfume she had developed a bright pink colored ink to highlight the name of the perfume "Shocking" for the box design. The new pink color became a signature of Schiaparelli's clothing design and "shocking pink" entered the lexicon.

Answer: Paper money is green

The connection between envy and "greenbacks" (money) would seem obvious when viewed from a 21st Century perspective. However, the printing of money in a green shade is a recent phenomenon stemming from the introduction of the American "greenback" notes in 1862, during the American Civil War. Historically, paper money or debt instruments were not of any specified color and certainly note uniformly green. Further, as would be obvious for most of the world, while the familiar green color of US currency may have become widely circulated in the 20th and 21st centuries, most world currency is still not green.

Why then do we associate green with envy and the emotion of jealousy? The likely answer stems from the observable medical connection between green bodily fluids and negative feelings. Strong negative feelings might result in a person vomiting the acid liver bile that often appears green in discharge. This concept was perhaps first expressed in the 7th Century B.C. by the Greek poet Sappho, who described a jealous lover as being "green". As with many idioms Shakespeare also has a role to play. In "Othello" the villainous Iago warns O! Beware my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on."