Colors in Spanish, iCaramba! Trivia Quiz

Answer: yellow

"The banana is yellow."

'Amarillo' means yellow. Notice the "-illo" ending? That means it's a diminutive, but of what? 'Mental Floss' magazine contends it is the not-so-common Spanish word 'amargo', derived from the Latin 'amarus', meaning "bitter". It refers to one of the four humors of the body, yellow bile, which were believed to control one's health and personality (bile being bitter). The Online Etymology Dictionary, however, states it's a diminutive of the Arabic 'anbari', meaning "yellow- or amber-colored". (This comes from a 19th-century theory.) Most authorities agree with 'Mental Floss'!

Note that colors in Spanish must agree in gender with the noun they modify: for example, 'un pollito amarillo' or 'una pollita amarilla' to describe a male or female yellow chick.

Answer: red

"The apple is red."

'Rojo' (or 'roja' in the feminine) comes from the Latin 'russus' ("red"), which in turn comes from the Indo-European root '*reudh-'. Whereas 'rojo' and 'rubio' ("blond") came from the Latin branch, words like 'eritrocito' ("erythocyte", or red blood cell) and 'Eritrea' (that African country along the Red Sea), come from the Greek branch 'erythro'. (Ancient Greek abhors words starting with 'R' and so adds an extra syllable.)

Answer: black

"The witch has a black cat".

Both Portuguese and Spanish use the word 'negro' to mean "black", from the Latin 'nigrum', which is the genitive[*] of 'niger', meaning "black, dark, sable, dusky" not to mention "gloomy, unlucky, bad". It may originate from the Indo-European root '*nekw-t-' ("night").

[*] Note that most Spanish words come from the genitive case in Latin, which roughly corresponds to the possessive in English (Bob's dog, the girl's toy, etc.)

Answer: green

"Look at the green trees."

'Verde' comes from the Latin 'viride'. According to deChile.net, this comes from the verb 'virere', which means to be vigorous and strong, and when applied to plants, means to be full of foliage, hence green. It first appeared in the 'Diccionario de Real Academia Española' (Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy) in 1739.

Notice that colors, like other adjectives in Spanish, must agree in number with the word they modify. 'Green trees' = 'los árboles verdes', but 'green apple' = 'la manzana verde'.

Answer: orange

"The orange [fruit] is orange."

Unlike English, Spanish has one word for the fruit, 'la naranja', and another for the color, 'anaranjado'. As Spain was conquered by the Moors, many Spanish words come from Arabic origin. 'Naranja' comes from the Arabic 'naranj', which by way of Persia ultimately derives from the Sanskrit 'naranga', meaning "orange tree". 'Anaranjado' simply means "orange-colored" (the '-ado' ending is like adding '-ed' to a word in English).

Answer: white

"The snow is white."

'Blanco' (m.) or 'blanca' (f.) strangely enough, does not come from Latin but from some Germanic source, whence we get the English word 'blank', according to the Online Etymology Dictionary (not to mention the Italian 'bianco' and the French 'blanc'). A Chilean word site states that the Teutons referred to their light-colored horses as 'blank' or 'blanch'. With the invasion of barbarians, the Germanic word 'blank' or 'blanch' replaced the Latin 'albus' -- which is still retained, however, in 'albino' and 'alba' ("dawn").

Answer: blue

"The sky is blue".

'Azul' is yet another Spanish word of Arabic origin, from 'lazurd', in a contraction and false separation of (al)-lazuward (as though the 'l' were an article), which means "lapis-lazuli" (the deep blue semi-precious stone). This is (strictly speaking) from the Persian word 'lajward', after a place in Turkestan, according to Joan Coromimas in her 'Breve Diccionario Etimológico de la Lengua Castellana' ("Brief Etymological Dictionary of the Castilian Language").

Note that Spanish speakers often refer to standard Spanish, especially as spoken in Spain, as Castilian or 'castellano', because it comes from the dialect of the Kingdom of Castile.

Answer: purple

"I like the purple dress."

Like 'purple' in English, 'púrpura' comes from the Greek 'porphyra', the mollusk murex from which the purple dye, highly valued in ancient times, was obtained. The Greek word may come from somewhere in the Middle East and is associated with the Phoenicians, a seafaring people who dominated the purple trade as they harvested the murex in their waters.

Spanish has many names for the purple-violet spectrum, including 'violeta', 'morado' (very common in Mexico), and 'lila' ("lilac"). In some cultures the word 'morado' is used in everyday speech more than 'púrpura', which may sound antiquated or clinical (as it used to describe bruises).

Answer: brown

"The dog is brown."

'Marrón' derives directly from the French 'marron' for "chestnut", which came from the Italian 'marrone', from the medieval Greek 'maraon'. Whereas 'marrón' in Spanish means "brown", in English 'maroon' refers specifically to a brownish-crimson or dark-brownish-magenta color - so it is a false cognate even though it shares the same Greek root! Spanish has many other words for brown, including 'pardo', 'castaño' ("chestnut", but chiefly for eyes and hair), and 'moreno' (referring to the Moors).

Answer: grey

"I have a grey parrot".

The Spanish 'gris' is borrowed from directly the Provençal 'gris', which in turn borrowed it from the Franco-Germanic. Basically, it shares the same Proto-Germanic root as the English word 'grey' (or 'gray' if you prefer), with no Latin contribution. 'Gris' does not vary by gender but must agree in number: 'una camisa gris, dos camisas grises, etc' means "one grey shirt, two grey shirts," etc.

By the way, the African grey parrot is referred to in Spanish as 'el loro gris' or 'el loro gris con cola roja' ("the red-tailed grey parrot") or 'el yaco'.