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On Psychological, Semantic and Structural Aspects of 

English Colour Terms

Naira Avakyan, Naira Nersissyan
Yerevan State University

O ver centuries colours have come to mean many things to different cultures. Theyhave always fascinated humankind. They provide us with the ability to differ-
entiate many things. We think of colour as an independent concept with a part to play in
every aspect of our lives, e.g. we have favourite colours for our clothes, our rooms, etc.
The recognition and interpretation of colour are determined by many factors – cultural,
religious, spiritual, biological, and psychological. The natural development of colour
recognition is participatory, and the perception of the mind is unconsciously influenced
by these factors. For example, ancient Greeks had no word for the colour blue, so they
described the sea as wine-darkand the sky as bronze. To them, blue was not a colour in
our sense, but the quality of darkness. The terms used to describe colour were psycho-
logical attributes such as fresh, dark, moist, or alive. The value of colouris extensive. It
ranges from the use of language to artists and designing. The most important aspect of
colour in daily life is probably the one that is least defined and most variable. It involves
aesthetic and psychological responses to colour, and influences art, fashion, commerce
and even physical and emotional sensations. One example of the link between colour and
emotion is the common perception that red, orange, yellow, and brown hues are warm,
while the blue, green and grey ones are cold: The red, orange, and yellow hues are said
to induce excitement, cheerfulness, stimulation, and aggression; the blues and greens–
security, calm and peace; and the browns, greys, and blacks– sadness, depression, and
melancholy. Green monster of jealousy, red with anger, and feeling blue – these are emo-
tions that are described in relation to colours. In these simple English phrases, colours are
a symbol of feelings. Colours make these emotions more vivid and descriptive. It is one
of the many steps to take language to a higher level of sophistication and beauty.
Emotions will be much too simple if we were just to describe ourselves by a mere feel-
ing. It does not provide enough exaggeration and amplification of the feeling. Being red
with anger makes the feeling of fury more tragic and dramatic.The use of colour terms
allows us to express ourselves better and appreciate words since we do not need to use
pompous words to describe our feelings, thus economizing on words.

In addition to emotional associations, factors that affect colour perception include the
observer’s age, mood, and mental health. Many psychologists believe that analysing an
individual’s uses of and responses to colour can reveal information about the individual’s
physiological and psychological condition.

Colours are not universal. Some languages do not possess separate words for green
and blue or for yellow and orange, while the Eskimos use 17 words for white as applied
to different snow conditions (soft snow, frozen snow, melted snow, etc.). As for us, we,
Armenians, do not yield to the limitation of colours; it can be said without scruple that

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there exist 27 synonyms for white, not to mention their flexible combinability. Colour
terms are widely used in languages; they are used in English as well. Like colour termi-
nology, colour harmony, colour preferences, colour symbolism, and other psychological
aspects of colour are culturally conditioned, and they vary considerably in terms of place
and historical period. One cross-cultural study showed that American and Japanese con-
cepts of warm and cold colours are essentially the same, but that in Japan blue and green
hues are perceived to be good and the red-purple range as bad, while in the United States
the red- yellow- green range is considered good and oranges and red-purples– bad. The
colour of mourning is black in the West, yet other cultures use white, purple, or gold for
this purpose. Besides many colours, there are a lot of shades of them e.g. the colourred
has many shades: scarlet, crimson, cherry, etc. Sometimes if we want to show what
shades of the colour we exactly mean, we can use them with other words, for instanceoil-
brown and oil-green, lead-white and grey as lead, etc. At the same time one particular
colour may have many different first members like chalk-, frost-, milk-, wall-, swan-, sil-
ver-white.

Now we shall consider only the part of the field which covers the words red, orange,
yellow, green and blue. Each of these terms is referentially imprecise, but their relative
position in this lexical system is fixed (and as a set they cover the greater part of the vis-
ible spectrum); orange lies between red and yellow, yellow – between orange and green
and so on. It is part of the sense of each of these terms that they belong to this particular
lexical system in English. It might appear that the notion of sense is unnecessary here,
and that an account of the reference of colour terms would be sufficient as a description
of their meaning. Consider, however, the conditions under which one might come to learn
or be said to know the reference of these words. The child learning English cannot first
learn the reference of blue and then subsequently the reference of green or yellow, so that
at a particular time he could be said to know the reference of one but not the other. (It is
true that he might learn, that green referred to the colour of grass or the leaves of a par-
ticular tree, or one of his mother’s dresses; but the reference of green is wider than any
particular instance of its application and knowledge also of the boundaries of its refer-
ence). It must be supposed that over a certain period the child gradually learns the posi-
tion of green with respect to blue and orange, and soon until he has learnt the position of
each of the colourterms with respect to its neighbour in the lexical system.

It has often been shown that other languages impose a different form upon the sub-
stance by recognizing different members of areas within it and drawing the boundaries at
different places. To refer to an example used above; the Russian words ñèíèé and
ãîëóáîé together cover roughly the same area as the English word blue, or ñè ðå íå âûé
and ôèîëåòîâûé cover the same area as the English word violet. In Armenian the same
can be said about ·³½³ñ³·áõÛÝ, ݳñÝç³·áõÛÝ and ÍÇñ³Ý³·áõÛÝ which areequiva-
lent to the English orange. The words ñèíèé and ãîëóáîé refer to distinct but contigu-
ous colours co-ordinated in the system with the words çåëåíûé and æåëòûé (green and
yellow). They’re not to be regarded as terms which refer to different shades of one colour,
in the way that crimson and scarlet with other terms subdivide the area covered by red
in English.

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Colour terms are often used in phraseological units. We can compare word-groups
where colourterms are used to name an object exactly of that colour and word-groups
where it is used in quite a different meaning.

Free word-groups make up variable contexts, whereas the essential feature of phrase-
ological units is a non-variable or fixed context. So, depending on the context the names
of colours can show not only the colour but also some other qualities of the word which
they qualify (Amosova 1963).

While discussing phraseological units we must also pay attention to motivation,e.g.
nominal groups like red flower, blue dress, grey stone, etc. are lexically motivated. The
combined lexical meanings of these groups are deducible from the meanings of their
components, whereas structurally identical word-group red-tape –official bureaucratic
methods are lexically non-motivated. In these groups the constituents do not possess any
individual lexical meaning of their own as the word-groups under discussion seem to rep-
resent single indivisible semantic entities. 

The degree of motivation may be different. Between the extremes of complete moti-
vation and lack of motivation there are innumerable intermediate cases,e.g. the degree of
lexical motivation in the nominal group black market is higher than in Black Death, but
lower than in black dress, though none of the groups can be considered as completely
non-motivated. 

The constituent red in the free word-group red-flower may, if necessary, be substitut-
ed for by any other adjective denoting colour(blue, white, etc.) without essentially chang-
ing the denotational meaning of the word-group under discussion (a flower of a certain
colour).

In the phraseological unit red tape (bureaucratic methods) no such substitution is
possible as a change of the adjective would involve a complete change in the meaning of
the whole group. A blue (black, white, etc.) tape would mean a tape of a certain colour.
It follows that the phraseological unit red tape is semantically non-motivated, i.e.
whether the semantic relations between words are identical. So the word-group red-
flower may be deleted and transformed into flowers without making the sentence nonsen-
sical, e.g. I love red flowers, I love flowers, whereas I hate red tape cannot be trans-
formed into I hate tape or I hate red. It’s also argued that non-variability of the phraseo-
logical unit is not confined to its lexical components.

The grammatical structure of phraseological units is to a certain extent also stable.
Thus, though the structural pattern of the word-groups red-flower and red tape is identi-
cal (A+N), the noun flower may be used in the plural (red flowers), whereas no such
change is possible in the phraseological unit red tape; red tapes would then denote tapes
of red colour but not bureaucratic methods. 

This is also true of other types of phraseological units. Sometimes, however, the plu-
ral ending -s may change the meaning of the idiom completely but it will still remain as
an idiom though quite another one,e.g. white horse means cowardice while white horses
means white-crested waves at sea (áàðàøêè íà ìîðå). So here we have two different
idioms. 

Sometimes extra-linguistic factors may account for the loss of motivation, to show the

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white feather – to act as a coward, e.g. can be traced back to the days when cock-fight-
ing was popular. A white feather in a gamecock’s plumage denoted bad breeding and was
regarded as a sign of cowardice. Now that cock-fighting is no longer a popular sport, the
phrase is felt as non-motivated. 

So, we see now that motivation is rather important for the phraseological units, in this
case for idioms with colour names. Now we can refer to them from the point of view of
context. So, the colours are polysemantic words. It will be recalled that in analyzing, e.g.
the semantic structure of the polysemantic word yellow we can observe that some mean-
ings are representative of the word in isolation, i.e. they invariably occur to us when we
hear the word or see it written on paper. Other meanings come to the fore only when the
word is used in certain contexts. So, the adjective yellow when used in isolation denotes
a certain colour, whereas other meanings of this word, e.g. envious, suspicious, sensa-
tional, corrupt are perceived only in certain contexts, e.g. a yellow look, the yellow press,
etc. We see here that the quality of colour isn’t essential in these expressions at all; a look
can’t have a yellow colour, press isn’t yellow either. 

The same is true for other colours, e.g. white frost means the frost with snow and rime,
which isn’t exactly of white colour (and black frost means frost without snow), white
meat means the meat which is easily digested, white heat means extremely great heat.
Sometimes the colour is even less obvious, white wine is usually of yellow colour, white
herring (and red herring) means just the fresh one, white coffee is brown, brown bread
isn’t exactly brown, etc. Here white denotes just the lightest in colour of that usually to
be found. But it can also be used metaphorically,e.g. white can mean the one that is good,
kind, again light but from another point of view. So white day – happy day, white lie –a
diplomatic untruth, told with good intentions, white witch –the kind one. 

Black is also used in phrases like black coffee or black people though they are not
black in their colour. And it is used as a negative factor opposite to white. So black
humour means a morbid form of humour, black list–a list of persons or organizations to
be disapproved or suspected of disloyalty, misconduct, etc., black market –the selling of
goods at illegal quantities, black sheep–a person considered disgraceful by his family,
etc. 

But not only black can mean something that is bad as in yellow look, or green with
envy– very envious, very jealous, red flag–sign of danger, red-handed–in the act of com-
mitting a crime, in the red–losing money, etc. The same is true for brown the archaic
meaning of which was dark. So we can say brown study –a mood of deep absorption or
thoughtfulness. Even white doesn’t always mean something good,e.g. white elephant
means a possession that is no longer wanted by its owner, often because it is useless,
expensive, or troublesome to maintain. 

To sum up,colour is a silent language. Without words and across differing cultures,
colours can be used for communication among people. Colours are rich in hidden mean-
ings and symbolisms.Colour symbolism serves an important role in art, religion, politics,
and ceremonials, as well as in everyday life. Its strong emotional connotations can affect
colour perception so that, for example, an apple or heart-shaped figure cut from orange
paper may seem to have a redder hue than a geometric figure cut from the same paper

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because of the specific psychological meaning that is associated with the shape.What is
more, colours have a very interesting story to tell. They hold information and transmit
messages. Intuitively and instinctively, human memory is stored within a colour-coded
resonance.

References:

1. Amosova, N.N. (1963) Osnovy Anglijskoj Frazeologii. Leningrad: Izdatelstvo
Leningradskogo Universyteta.

2. Smith, E.E. & Medin, D.L. (1981) Categories and Concepts. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.

3. Sonomura, O.M. (1996) Idiomaticity in the Basic Writing of American English. New
York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

4. Taylor, J.R. (1995) Linguistic Categorization. Prototypes in Linguistic Theory.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

5. Wooten, B. & Miller, D.L. (1997) The Psychophysics of Color. Cambridge: CUP.

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