Color Idioms
In a previous Grammar Girl podcast, we explored a bunch of phrases that use the word blue. Now, seven other hues get their due.
1. Red-Handed
First is that fiery color red, as in the idiom caught red-handed, which has a hyphen between red and handed. This means caught in the act of a crime, (1) as in “She was caught red-handed stealing $100.” As you might suspect, the use of the color red in the phrase originates from the color of blood. The phrase originally referred to blood on a murderer’s hands but now extends to other crimes. (2) The noun red-hand has appeared in print in Scottish legal proceedings since 1432, (3) but red-handed was first printed in 1819, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, which helped to popularize the phrase. (4)
2. White-Livered
Now we’ll move from red to white, and the association of white with cowardice. If you say a man is white-livered or lily-livered, you are saying that he lacks courage, or that he is pale and without vitality. (5) It is easy to see why white is associated with being pale and unhealthy, but we need to dig a little deeper to discover what a pale liver has to do with being afraid.
It all goes back to the Ancient Greeks and Hippocrates, who proposed a theory called humorism. (6) This theory, which was believed until the 1800s, held that the body had four humors—black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood—and that those humors needed to be kept in balance.
The humor that is relevant to the meaning of white-livered is yellow bile, supposedly made in the liver. Yellow bile, known as the choleric humor, is hot and dry, and it “provokes, excites and emboldens the passions.” (7) The idiom white-livered, therefore, stems from the thought that individuals without much yellow bile lacked a bold temperament and were therefore cowardly. (8)
(There are different reasons that yellow is sometimes associated with cowardice.)
3. Tickled Pink
Next on our list of colors is pink, and we’re sticking with the medical theme. We hope you’ll be tickled pink! The idiom tickled pink means delighted and first came into being in 1922. (9) The phrase uses the color pink because your complexion becomes flushed—and pinkish—when you feel the tickling sensation. (10) That’s great if you enjoy tickling, but parents may want to think twice when tickling their children (or other people’s kids). Laughing when being tickled is an automatic response (11) and the child may not actually enjoy the tickling. It can be difficult to say, “Stop!”
4. Yellow Journalism
Color number four—yellow—moves us to a different kind of sensation: sensational journalism, also known as yellow journalism. This style of reporting, which was at its height in the late 19th century, favors sensationalism over facts. (12) It all came about because of a rivalry between newspaper magnates Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York World, and William Randolph Hearst, owner of the Journal. The World published a popular cartoon that featured a character called the Yellow Kid, and this cartoon increased sales tremendously. (13) The Journal realized this and hired the artist away, causing a bidding war. Both papers also increased circulation by focusing their reporting on the Cuban struggle for independence, sometimes bending the truth. These days, our newspapers and Internet news sites are filled with banner headlines, colorful comics, and an abundance of illustrations, and we can thank the yellow journalists of the late 1890s for developing these now-commonplace techniques. (12)
(Here’s another interesting theory about the origin of yellow journalism. H/t Neal Whitman.]
5. Rose-Colored Glasses
Rose is our next color. We use the words rose-colored and rosy to mean optimistic, as in the expressions looking through rose-colored glasses and things are looking rosy. (14) If someone looks at the world through rose-colored glasses, she is perhaps being overly optimistic and in denial. (15) The idea of an idyllic worldview being rosy dates from at least the 17th century, (15) but Merriam-Webster.com dates the idiom rose-colored glasses to 1926. (16) Theories about why it means optimistic abound, and we’ll cover a couple.
The first takes us to Victorian times and the thought that an artist could liven up a painting by adding extra roses to it. (15) That sounds reasonable, as does the second theory, which holds that early mapmakers paid such close attention to detail that they needed to keep their spectacles clean with rose petals. (15)
An interesting factoid that came up during research is worth sharing, though it likely has nothing to do with the meaning of rose-colored and rosy: In the early 1900s, some farmers started to place rose-colored glasses on their chickens to reduce cannibalization. (17) The thinking was that the glasses would keep the chickens from recognizing blood on other chickens, which apparently triggers the attack instinct. I wonder if these glasses work or if their use was overly optimistic.
6. Green-Eyed Monster
Our sixth color is green and the idiom green with envy, which means jealous and dates from the mid-1800s. (18) Shakespeare used other green-related phrases, indicating that the association between green and jealousy has been around much longer than 160 years. For example, you’ll find the phrase green-eyed monster in Othello, the green sickness in Anthony and Cleopatra, and green-eyed jealousy in Merchant of Venice. (19) In fact, it seems we can go back to the Ancient Greeks and their humors, to propose an origin for the phrase. (20) Remember the bile we mentioned when discussing the phrase white-livered? It seems that the Greeks thought if you were sick, the body produced too much bile, making you look green. We have probably all looked green at some point when feeling sick.
7. Black Humor
Seventh and last in our list of colors is black. Black humor, or black comedy, is a style of satire that highlights very serious issues through comedy. The term comes from the French l’humour noire and was coined by Surrealist André Breton around 1940. (21) This phrase debuted in English around 1965, (22) and you’ll also hear the terms dark humor and dark comedy to refer to this extreme kind of satire. Although the phrases are somewhat new to the language, the concept has been around for a few centuries.
A famous example of black comedy is Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, published in 1729. (23) This short work “modestly” suggests how the British should eat Irish babies. Of course Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, was not serious; his outlandish—even funny—statements brought attention to the problem of Irish poverty. Here’s a sample: “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.” (23)
It is easy to see why the color black is used in this idiom, because of the horror involved—both the fiction (eating babies) and the reality (starvation).
Well, that’s all for now. We hope that our discussion of black humor at the end didn’t turn you a little green.
That segment was written by Bonnie Mills, who is the author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier, and blogs at SentenceSleuth.blogspot.com.
References
1. Dictionary.com. “Red-handed.” https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/red-handed?s=t. Accessed November 18, 2015.
2. The Free Dictionary. “Catch red-handed.” https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/catch+red-handed. Accessed November 18, 2015.
3. The Phrase Finder. “Caught red-handed.” https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/caught-red-handed.html. Accessed November 18, 2015.
4. Mental Floss website. “Where Did the Phrase ‘Caught Red Handed’ Come From?” https://mentalfloss.com/article/33503/where-did-phrase-caught-red-handed-come. Accessed November 18, 2015.
5. Dictionary.com. “White-livered.” https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/white-livered. Accessed November 18, 2015.
6. wiseGEEK website. “What are the Four Humors?” https://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-four-humors.htm. Accessed November 18, 2015.
7. GreekMedicine.net. “The Four Humors.” https://www.greekmedicine.net/b_p/Four_Humors.html. Accessed November 18, 2015.
8. Your Dictionary. “White-livered.” https://www.yourdictionary.com/white-livered. Accessed November 18, 2015.
9. The Free Dictionary. “Tickled pink.” https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/tickled+pink. Accessed November 18, 2015.
10. The Phrase Finder. “Tickled pink.” https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/tickled-pink.html. Accessed November 18, 2015.
11. Handinhandparenting.org. “Tickling kids can do more harm than good.” https://www.handinhandparenting.org/article/tickling-kids-can-do-more-harm-than-good/. Accessed November 18, 2015.
12. U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian website. “Milestones: 1866-1898.” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism. Accessed November 18, 2015.
13. Encyclopedia Brittanica website. “Yellow journalism.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/yellow-journalism. Accessed November 18, 2015.
14. The Free Dictionary. “Rosy.” https://www.thefreedictionary.com/rosy. Accessed November 18, 2015.
15. wiseGEEK website. “What are Rose-Colored Glasses?” https://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-rose-colored-glasses.htm. Accessed November 18, 2015.
16. Merriam-Webster website. “Rose-colored glasses.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rose-colored%20glasses. Accessed November 18, 2015.
17. io9.com. “Thousands Of Chickens Once Wore Eyeglasses To Stop Them Killing Each Other.” https://io9.com/thousands-of-chickens-once-wore-glasses-to-stop-them-ki-1700343874 Accessed November 18, 2015.
18. Dictionary.com. “Green with envy.” https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/green-with-envy. Accessed November 18, 2015.
19. Sensationalcolor.com. “Turning Green With Envy.” https://www.sensationalcolor.com/color-meaning/color-words-phrases/green-with-envy-2109#.VlJgEnarTIU. Accessed November 18, 2015.
20. wiseGEEK website. https://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-green-with-envy.htm. Accessed November 18, 2015.
21. Encyclopedia Brittanica website. “Black humour.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/black-humor. Accessed November 18, 2015.
22. Dictionary.com. “Black humor.” https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/black-humor. Accessed November 18, 2015.
23. The Art Bin. “A Modest Proposal.” https://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html. Accessed November 18, 2015.
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About the Author
Bonnie Mills has been a copyeditor since 1996.
