purple

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈpɜː.pəl/, US /ˈpɝː.pəl/^[1]

Etymology

It is Middle English purpel, inherited from Old English purpul, a dissimilated Northumbrian form, first in the Lindisfarne Gospels, of Old English purpure “purple dye, a purple garment” (oblique case purpuran),^[2][3][4] borrowed by the 9th century from Latin purpura (“purple colour; purple-dyed cloth; the shellfish yielding the dye”),^[2][3][5] from Greek πορφύρα (porphýra, “purple dye, the murex shellfish”),^[2][3][4] a word of uncertain origin, perhaps Semitic (see porphyry).^[2][3] The r changed to l as in marble.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of the colour of the dress of emperors and kings: about 975 in the OED, about 950 in Barnhart; purpure, a purple garment, is before 899, in Alfred's translation of Orosius.^[6][3]

Semantic evolution

The Tyrian purple prized for royal robes was nearer crimson,^[2][7] and Hoad notes that the word first meant crimson or another red before it named the mixture of red and blue;^[4] the modern colour is from 1398 in the OED.^[6] Imperial or royal power is the purple by the 1550s,^[2] and purple was the colour of royal or church mourning from 1466.^[6][2] In poetry it is the colour of blood from 1590.^[6] Rhetorically splendid or gaudy is from the 1590s,^[2] 1598 in the OED,^[6] later of prose, and the purple patch translates Horace's purpureus pannus.^[7] The verb, to make purple, is from about 1400.^[2][3] The Purple Heart, the US medal for those wounded in combat, was instituted in 1932, after a cloth badge of George Washington's of 1782,^[2] and in US politics purple has marked the middle ground between red and blue by 2004.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 950 – of imperial colour.^[3]
• 1398 – the colour between red and blue.^[6]
• c. 1400 – the verb.^[2]
• 1466 – the colour of mourning.^[6]
• 1550s – the purple, royal power.^[2]
• 1590s – ornate, rhetorical.^[2]
• 1932 – the Purple Heart.^[2]

Modern meaning

Adjective

1. Of a colour between red and blue.
2. Of writing, too elaborate or ornate: purple prose.
3. (literary) Royal or imperial.

Noun

1. A colour between red and blue.
2. (the purple) Royal or imperial rank; the rank of a cardinal or bishop.

Verb

1. To make or become purple.

Word family

• purpleness

Related words

• porphyry
• purpure
• purplish

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press