An African Daisy of almost psychedelic purple

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Purple, Violet

The term purple in its widest sense refers to a wide variety of shades of color occurring between blue and red. more...

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Purple is also used in a more specialized and restricted sense by chromaticians (color scientists) to indicate those colors between violet and red which are not spectral colors but mixtures of red and blue light. These colors are those colors which are along what is called the purple boundary (a straight line between violet and red) on the CIE chromaticity diagram.

In an even more restricted sense, the term purple is used to describe the color between violet and magenta on the color wheel (this color, electric purple is shown below) and its light or dark shades .

The term purple may also be used specifically to describe one of the specific shades of purple displayed below: The color violet (an important color between blue and red); the various colors regarded as the standard for purple over historical time: imperial purple, royal purple, generic purple, artist's purple and electric purple; the computer web color purples, purple (HTML/CSS color) and purple (X11 color); or other variations on the color purple such as psychedelic purple, pansy purple, aubergine and Tokyo purple.

Etymology

The word purple comes from the Middle English word purple which originates from the Latin purpura. This in turn is derived from the (Koine Greek: Ï€Î¿ÏÏ†ÏÏÎ±, porphura) name of the dye manufactured in Classical antiquity from the mucus-secretion of the hypobranchial gland of a marine snail known as the Murex brandaris or the spiny dye-murex.

The first recorded use of the word purpel in English was in the year AD 975.

Purple on the CIE chromaticity diagram

On a chromaticity diagram, the straight line connecting the extreme spectral colors (red and violet) is known as the line of purples (or purple boundary); it represents one limit of human color perception. The color magenta used in the CMYK printing process is on the line of purples, but most people associate the term "purple" with a somewhat bluer shade. Some common confusion exists concerning the color names "purple" and "violet". Purple is a mixture of red and blue light, whereas violet is a spectral color. (see below section).

Purple versus violet: violet is spectral, purple is extraspectral

The color terms purple and violet cause confusion for many people: they are used interchangeably by some people in casual conversation. Technically, purple when used as a general term in its most general sense is the name of the color group of many related colors such as violet, red-violet, heliotrope, lavender, mauve, magenta, indigo and lilac. Indigo is a blue-purple; lilac is a light purple; mauve is in between the two. Crayola crayons have many shades of purple; see List of Crayola crayon colors.