Colors

Randall Munroe has just posted the results of the xkcd color survey. It's neat to see the patterns that emerged. A few random observations:

The blog post opens with a quote from Billy Budd that begins, "Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?" The full quote is beautifully written, but to steal a phrase from Mark Twain, Melville "is not a close observer" (at least in this case). The colors yellow, green, and blue fall between orange and violet in every rainbow, so to say that those two "blendingly enter into" each other seems rather odd.

The survey's list of common, consistent color names is fascinating (though it needs some synonym-pruning). The names that I know feel "right"; I've wondered whether people have color "accents", but I'm pretty close to the norm here. I'm strangely delighted by the number of color names people agree on, including "apple green", "pea soup", and even "mushroom". (Also "bland"!) "Ugly green" is amusing, too. "Puke green" shows up early at #72 (it's pretty similar to "puke" and "vomit"). I guess it speaks well for the consistency of the survey that "poop" and "shit" are nearly identical (considerably more so than "light purple" is to the less common "light urple", in fact). Those two are very similar to their "____ brown" variants, but (as expected) noticeably different from "baby poop/shit green". (And again, we can agree on all this? Wow.)

Finally, the list of unusual survey responses is a lot of fun. Some are vivid color descriptions, like "unsure-whether-boy-or-girl baby room color" (sort of a cool green), "what I'm sure was once nice wallpaper before you stained it with your nicotine" (greyish pink), and "maybe a half hour before the first stars start showing up in the night sky" (my favorite). Others are comments on the survey itself, like "jesus christ what is with you and green" [sic] and "now i'm just getting freaked out. nothing looks like a proper colour anymore." Good stuff.