Beige

Beige

Beige

Color

For the RAL color, see Beige (RAL). For the album by The Arrogant Worms, see Beige (album). For the novel by Cecil Castellucci, see Beige (novel).

Beige is variously described as a pale sandy fawn color,[1] a grayish tan,[2] a light-grayish yellowish brown, or a pale to grayish yellow.[3] It takes its name from French, where the word originally meant natural wool that has been neither bleached nor dyed, hence also the color of natural wool.[4][5] A more than 300 year old antecessor of the word "beige" can be found in the surname of Louis de Béchameil and the French name for Béchamel sauce.

Quick Facts Color coordinates, Hex triplet ...
Beige is the French word for the color of natural wool. Freshly shorn wool from the Royal Winter Fair.

The word "beige" has come to be used to describe a variety of light tints chosen for their neutral or pale warm appearance.

Beige began to commonly be used as a term for a color in France beginning approximately 1855–60; the writer Edmond de Goncourt used it in the novel La Fille Elisa in 1877. The first recorded use of beige as a color name in English was in 1887.[6]

Beige is notoriously difficult to produce in traditional offset CMYK printing because of the low levels of inks used on each plate; often it will print in purple or green and vary within a print run.[citation needed]

Various beige colors

Cosmic latte

Main article: Cosmic latte
Quick Facts Cosmic latte, Color coordinates ...

Cosmic latte is a name assigned in 2002 to the average color of the universe (derived from a sampling of the electromagnetic radiation from 200,000 galaxies), given by a team of astronomers from Johns Hopkins University.

Cream

Main article: Cream (colour)
Quick Facts Cream, Color coordinates ...

Cream is the color of the cream produced by cattle grazing on natural pasture with plants rich in yellow carotenoid pigments, some of which are incorporated into the cream, to give a yellow tone to white.

Strawberries with vanilla ice cream

The first recorded use of cream as a color name in English was in 1590.[7]

Unbleached silk

Quick Facts Unbleached silk, Color coordinates ...

Unbleached silk is one of the Japanese traditional colors in use since beginning in 660 CE in the form of various dyes that are used in designing kimonos.[8][9]

Unbleached silk jacket

The name of this color in Japanese is shironeri.

Tuscan

Main article: Tuscan red
Quick Facts Tuscan, Color coordinates ...

The first recorded use of Tuscan as a color name in English was in 1887.[10]

Buff

Main article: Buff (colour)
Quick Facts Buff, Color coordinates ...

Buff is a pale yellow-brown color that got its name from the color of buffed leather.[11]

Buff is the color of fine undyed leathers.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, buff as a descriptor of a color was first used in the London Gazette of 1686, describing a uniform to be "A Red Coat with a Buff-colour'd lining".[12]

Desert sand

Main article: Desert sand (color)
Quick Facts Desert sand, Color coordinates ...

The color desert sand may be regarded as a deep shade of beige. It is a pale tint of a color called desert. The color name "desert" was first used in 1920.[13]

A "beige" AT&T telephone.

In the 1960s, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) marketed desert sand–colored telephones for offices and homes. However, they described the color as "beige". It is therefore common for many people to refer to the color desert sand as "beige".

Ecru

Main article: Ecru
Quick Facts Ecru, Color coordinates ...

Originally in the 19th century and up to at least 1930, the color ecru meant exactly the same color as beige (i.e. the pale cream color shown above as beige),[14] and the word is often used to refer to such fabrics as silk and linen in their unbleached state. Ecru comes from the French word écru, which means literally "raw" or "unbleached".

Since at least the 1950s, however, the color ecru has been regarded as a different color from beige, presumably in order to allow interior designers a wider palette of colors to choose from.[15]

Khaki

Main article: Khaki
Quick Facts Khaki, Color coordinates ...

Khaki was designated in the 1930 book A Dictionary of Color, the standard for color nomenclature before the introduction of computers.

The first recorded use of khaki as a color name in English was in 1848.[16]

French beige

Quick Facts French beige, Color coordinates ...

The first recorded use of French beige as a color name in English was in 1927.[17]

The normalized color coordinates for French beige are identical to café au lait and Tuscan tan, which were first recorded as color names in English in 1839[18] and 1926,[19] respectively.

Quick Facts Light French beige, Color coordinates ...

Mode beige

Quick Facts Mode beige, Color coordinates ...

Mode beige is a very dark shade of beige.

The first recorded use of mode beige as a color name in English was in 1928.[20]

The normalized color coordinates for mode beige are identical to the color names drab, sand dune, and bistre brown, which were first recorded as color names in English, respectively, in 1686,[21] 1925,[22] and 1930.[23]

In nature

Fish

Mammal

Metaphor

Beige is sometimes used as a metaphor for something which is bland, boring or conventional. In this sense, it is used in contradistinction to more vibrant and exciting (or more individual) colours.[24]

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Oxford English Dictionary
  2. [2]
    Webster's New World Dictionary of the English Language, 1964
  3. [3]
    Macmillan On-Line Dictionary.
  4. [4]
    Le Petit Robert Dictionnaire.
  5. [5]
    Harper, Douglas. "beige". Online Etymology Dictionary.
  6. [6]
    Maerz and Paul (1930). A Dictionary of Colour. New York, McGraw-Hill, p. 190; Color Sample of Beige: p. 45 Plate 11 Color Sample C2. The color shown above matches the color sample in the book.
  7. [7]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 206; Color Sample of Cream: p. 41 Plate 9 Color Sample D4 The color shown above matches the color sample in the book.
  8. [8]
    Nagasaki, Seiki. Nihon no dentoshoku : sono shikimei to shikicho, Seigensha, 2001. ISBN 4-916094-53-0
  9. [9]
    Nihon Shikisai Gakkai. Shinpen shikisai kagaku handobukku, Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1985. ISBN 4-13-061000-7
  10. [10]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 206; Color Sample of Tuscan: p. 43 Plate 10 Color Sample E5
  11. [11]
    Paterson, Ian (2003), A Dictionary of Colour (1st paperback ed.), London: Thorogood (published 2004), p. 73, ISBN 1-85418-375-3, OCLC 60411025
  12. [12]
    "buff, adj.1". Oxford English Dictionary. OUP. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
  13. [13]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York: 1930 McGraw-Hill p. 194; Color Sample of Desert: p. 47 Plate 12 Color Sample I7
  14. [14]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 149—Discussion of the color Beige (shown in this book's color sample as being the same color that is displayed as "beige" in the Wikipedia color box shown above) notes that beige is exactly the same color as Ecru.
  15. [15]
    "ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Colo(u)r Names (1955): Ea through Ez". Retsof. Archived from the original on 2012-11-22. Retrieved 2007-10-23.[unreliable source?]
  16. [16]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 197; Color Sample of Khaki: p. 49 Plate 13 Color Sample J7
  17. [17]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 195; Color Sample of French beige: p. 49 Plate 13 Color Sample A7
  18. [18]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 191; Color Sample of Cafe au Lait: p. 47 Plate 12 Color Sample A6
  19. [19]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 206; Color Sample of Tuscan tan: p. 49 Plate 13 Color Sample C8
  20. [20]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 199; Color Sample of Mode Beige: p. 47 Plate 14 Color Sample B5
  21. [21]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 194
  22. [22]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 204; Color Sample of Sand Dune: p. 47 Plate 14 Color Sample B5
  23. [23]
    Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York: 1930 McGraw-Hill p. 53 Plate 15 Color Sample C9
  24. [24]
    St. Clair, Kassia (2016). The Secret Lives of Colour. London: John Murray. pp. 58–59. ISBN 9781473630819. OCLC 936144129.
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