Talk:dark green

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Green that isn't especially bright. I suppose this was only added by somebody conscientious who wanted to include all of the standard computer colour names. Equinox ◑ 18:56, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd say keep on the basis that there is dark green, dark blue, dark red, and dark gray/dark grey, but not dark purple nor dark yellow nor any other color I can think of. --EncycloPetey 20:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Why do you think there aren't dark yellow and purple? There's plenty of usage. Equinox ◑ 20:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

If that's the case, then I reverse my position. However, it is my experience that certain colors are never described as "dark", such as magenta, white, black, chartreuse, etc. Only a few of the basic seven colors in the visible spectrum are usually preceded by "dark" or "light", as well as grey and brown. --EncycloPetey 20:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

1. I contend that most colours can take "dark" (e.g. yellow and purple, as above); "white" and "black" may well be exceptions, because of their extreme nature, but 2. In those cases, it is just that those colours cannot be dark by their very nature; it's like saying we should have big giant simply because there is no big dwarf (they are never big). Isn't it? Equinox ◑ 20:46, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the logic of keeping based on "dark" not being a universal modifier of all possible color words or any of an arbitrarily selected list of color words. This would seem to be a principle of broad application yielding extreme results. "Dark" and "light", "pale" and "deep", "fluorescent", "dayglo", "yellowish" and other modifiers can be applied to vast numbers of color words (though not all) without adding one iota to the value of Wiktionary.

The other OneLook references have only redirects to "green". DCDuring TALK 21:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete. @EncycloPetey: "Dark black" and "light black" are rare — so rare that this b.g.c. hit, by a well-respected linguist, gives them the ungrammaticality asterisk — but they are nonetheless attested, as may be seen (for example) in this b.g.c. hit. But even if we trust the former, it doesn't seem to support creating these entries, because it argues that this ungrammaticality follows immediately from the semantics of the component words. —Ruakh_TALK 23:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no "dark yellow" color, and I don’t know what "dark red" would refer to, but dark green, dark blue, dark gray, and dark brown refer to certain fairly specific colors. Different languages have very different numbers of single-word terms for different colors, from as few as two or three to hundreds. It just happens that English does not have a commonly used or understood single-word term for the colors light blue, dark blue, dark green, and so on. Russian, OTOH, does have, and light blue is голубой, dark blue is синий. Dark yellow is meaningless and can’t be used without graphic examples or detailed explanation. dark green is a very common term and people pretty well agree on the shades that it covers, and it is as specific as just green. There are even more precise terms, such as process green, but they tend to be technical. —Stephen 23:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

There have been scientific studies of the effect of language on color perception; I wonder if any of them might be relevant here? If I recall correctly, speakers of languages that distinguish light blue and dark blue are faster at finding the "odd one out" among a group of dark blue squares with one light blue square and vice versa, but no faster at finding the "odd one out" among a group of blue squares with one green square and vice versa. In other words, even though words like "light blue" and "dark blue" have distinct one-word translations in some languages, that doesn't mean that English-speakers will necessarily have those as distinct concepts. (BTW, I'm not so sure that "dark green" at least is all that specific; playing around with the "Edit Colors" control in MS Paint, I find that I'm quite happy to use "dark green" for everything from a deep, blue-infused forest green all the way to a very muddy yellow-green. Certainly when I hear "dark green", without more information, I picture a specific shade of dark green, but if I then saw the thing described, I'd instantly correct my picture, and I don't think I'd even realize that I'd pictured something different. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of "dark yellow".) —Ruakh_TALK 02:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

In English, dark orange is called brown and light red is called pink. That doesn't keep people from using those phrases though. The boundaries between hues like blue and green are specific to language. In the rainbow there is a continuous spectrum between them, and by the way there are also combinations of color not present in the rainbow. One distinction that a lot of languages make is between blue (like a navy blue) and what we might call baby blue. These are actually different hues, not just a shade or tint. DAVilla 05:15, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per others' comments: SoP.​—msh210℠ 00:03, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, it's a green that's dark. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:05, 5 November 2009 (UTC)