A.Word.A.Day--solferino

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The Magic of Words

Oct 15, 2010

This week's theme
Words about colors

This week's words
sienna
nankeen
gamboge
sinopia
solferino

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

solferino

PRONUNCIATION:

(sol-fuh-REE-no)

MEANING:

noun: Purplish red color.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Solferino, a village in northern Italy, where the Battle of Solferino was fought on June 24, 1859, resulting in forty thousand casualties in a single day. The color was named so because the dye of this color was discovered shortly after the battle, and supposedly the color represented how the battlefield appeared after the bloodshed.
The immense suffering Henry Dunant witnessed in the Battle of Solferino inspired him to campaign, which led to the founding of the Red Cross.

NOTES:

Another color named in this manner is magenta (after Magenta, Italy), whose dye was discovered shortly after the Battle of Magenta (June 4, 1859).

USAGE:

"Next season we will be drenched in solferino, their having exhausted rose, magenta and fuchsia in recent years."
Frances Cawthon; Most Kids Don't Need to Know; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Jun 16, 1986.

Explore "solferino" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Money often costs too much. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Truisms - mostly: Reflections on life, and relationships One hundred short poems by the artist and poet, Cariappa Annaiah.

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