Violet Is the Flower That Named the Colour
Violet is a purple-blue colour and a small flower. The flower came first, and the colour beyond it in the spectrum is called ultraviolet.
Violet is a small flower and the colour named after it. It sits at the short-wavelength end of the visible spectrum, which is why the invisible light just beyond it is called *ultraviolet* — literally beyond violet. English took the name from French, and the flower's shy habit gave the language *shrinking violet* for a retiring person.
- A small flower. *Wild violets.*
- A blue-purple colour. *Deep violet.*
- Ultraviolet — light beyond violet. *Ultraviolet radiation.*
- Shrinking violet — a shy person. *No shrinking violet.*
- Violent — a completely different word. *A violent storm.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | violet | A single violet. |
| Plural | violets | Sweet violets. |
| Adjective | violet | Violet ink. |
| Compound | ultraviolet | Ultraviolet light. |
| Latin | viola | The flower. |
- Violets flower early in shaded ground.The plant.
- The sky turned violet after sunset.The colour.
- She is no shrinking violet.Idiom, usually a compliment.
Violet or purple?
- Violet — a single wavelength of light, at the end of the visible spectrum
- Purple — a mixture your eye builds from red and blue, with no single wavelength
- Which means purple does not appear in a rainbow, but violet does
- Indigo — Newton's extra band, and the one most people cannot pick out
- Ultraviolet — beyond violet, and invisible to us
Old French *violete*, a diminutive of *viole*, from Latin *viola*, the flower. The colour sense is recorded in English from the 1300s.
Is purple the same as violet?
No. Violet is a real wavelength of light; purple is a mixture the brain constructs. That is why purple has no place in a rainbow.
Where does shrinking violet come from?
From the flower's habit of growing low and half-hidden. The phrase is nineteenth-century.