Talk:khaki

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Latest comment: 10 years ago by Spinningspark in topic RFV
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Canadian pronunciation[edit]

The traditional Canadian pronunciation with an /r/, /ˈkɑɹ.ki/, is currently unfamiliar to many or perhaps most Canadians my own age. I am 50. Varlaam 00:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

RFV[edit]

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.


Rfv-sense "Sometimes confusingly used as an abbreviation of khaki green." Removed and re-added a couple of times. Could be difficult to cite. - -sche (discuss) 07:42, 5 September 2012 (UTC)Reply

Why would it be difficult to cite?. To generations of British and Commonwealth soldiers, and perhaps others, khaki is green. Is this a regional thing, or is there a green meaning also used in the USA.(I've reworded the definition)--Dmol (talk) 08:04, 5 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
Well, as an aged Brit, I have never ever heard the word used to mean green. Only ever as a light brown. SemperBlotto (talk) 08:08, 5 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
@Dmol: To clarify, I say it could be difficult to cite because I expect many citations describe things as "khaki" without explaining what colour "khaki" is. I tried google books:"same khaki colour|color as", but only one result gives a clue to the colour: "same khaki color as the beach", i.e. tan. (The rest uselessly say "same khaki colour as his shirt".) I have seen a pair of olive-green pants described as "khaki" before, once, but the rest of the time, things marked "khaki" have always been tan. Maybe we can figure out what context labels apply to the two senses...
A Google Image search for "U.S. Army" khaki turns up mostly tan things with a few things that might be green, and a search for "British Army" khaki turns up some tan things, some things that might be green, and some grey things and even a reddish plaid thing. - -sche (discuss) 08:41, 5 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
I have since tried Google image search with "khaki green" and it does indeed show some things that I would have described as a sort of "olive green". SemperBlotto (talk) 08:44, 5 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
[[khaki green]] deserves its own entry, IMO. Even if plain "khaki" is attested in reference to the same colour, "khaki green" refers to a colour, like [[sky blue]] (azure), whereas searches for "khaki red" or "khaki blue" turn up things which are partly red/blue and separately partly khaki. - -sche (discuss) 08:54, 5 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
khaki green is sop - it is a colour mid-way between khaki and green, in the same way as we have blue-green and yellow-red. See here for instance (scroll up to the previous page to relate the colours of the design to the pattern). Also used figuratively. SpinningSpark 22:28, 6 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
...but we have both of the terms you link to, blue-green and yellow-red. So I still think khaki green deserves its own entry. - -sche (discuss) 22:35, 6 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
That wasn't intended as an argument for exclusion, merely to identify the definition. SpinningSpark 22:38, 6 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
Cited, SpinningSpark 09:07, 16 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
My earlier comment that it's hard to know what colour the citations are referring to stands, but I've detagged and kept the sense. - -sche (discuss) 05:55, 24 October 2012 (UTC)Reply


We can be pretty certain what colour is being cited when the cites refer to some kind of standard. Some of the cites I have added refer to the historic British PC10, which can be correlated to a colour in the modern Federal Standard 595. SpinningSpark 01:02, 16 June 2013 (UTC)Reply