Colors Word Search

Did you know?

green

Japan's green traffic signals are commonly called blue, carrying an older color vocabulary onto modern roads where English speakers would say green.

purple

Unlike violet, purple has no single wavelength in a rainbow; your brain blends signals from opposite ends of the spectrum.

orange

Carrots were once mostly purple or white; orange types grew dominant in the Netherlands and only later got tied to Dutch royalty.

crimson

Some brilliant red dyes come from cochineal insects living on cacti, turning tiny creatures into color for cloth and food.

burgundy

Burgundy is named after a wine region in France, its deep red matching the color of the reds poured there.

turquoise

Turquoise takes its name from French for 'Turkish,' because the blue-green stone first reached Europe through trade routes crossing Turkey.

charcoal

Chauvet Cave artists blended charcoal shading and scratched fine lines into animal pictures, using sophisticated techniques thousands of years before modern studios.

magenta

Magenta was named after an 1859 battle in Italy, just as chemists unveiled the bright new dye that season.

emerald

An emerald's green can come from tiny traces of chromium, the same element that helps make a ruby red.

scarlet

Scarlet once named a fine cloth rather than a specific red; the fabric's name eventually became the color's name.

silver

Silver is the best natural conductor of electricity and heat, beating even copper, though its price keeps it out of wiring.

violet

Bees see ultraviolet beyond violet, revealing flower patterns invisible to us. Their main color receptors detect ultraviolet, blue, and green, unlike ours.

maroon

The word maroon shares roots with chestnut, since the deep brownish-red shade recalls the color of a roasted chestnut's skin.

indigo

Fresh indigo-dyed cloth can look greenish at first; contact with oxygen helps turn the dye its familiar deep blue.

bronze

Some polished bronze mirrors project hidden pictures in reflected light, revealing designs that you can't see by looking at the shiny surface.

In their words