Shining so Bright

On rainy nights, the pavement reflects passing lights

and makes one feel as if life is a watercolor painting.

It's hard to imagine describing our surroundings

without words for the colors we sense; 

but as I mentioned yesterday, early in the history of English,

there were very few terms to suggest the saturation or hue of a color.

According to Ronald Casson in the article

"Color Shift: Evolution of English Color Terms from Brightness to Hue,"

which appeared in the journal Color Categories in Thought and Language,

most color terms of the Old English period 

predominately expressed brightness and luminosity.

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com

For example, Casson cites an early brightness term called tohrt, 

which denoted light.

Torht was often used in collocations 

like heofontorht, meaning heavenly or glorious brightness,

and radortorht, meaning 'heavenly bright.'
Since heofon is the word for heaven,
I would think those two would be reversed.

Regardless, the word torht was dropped during the Middle English period.

But there were a few brightness terms 

that did survive into today's English.

For example, dunn meant strongly bright 

and was used to describe rising clouds of dust, vapor, or smoke. 

The word's form  survived nearly intact,
but over time, its meaning shifted 

so that today dun refers to a brownish, dull color.

Casson also includes the term pealu,

a dusky gray color that was used to describe a polished shield, 

sun shining on waves, or a well-groomed horse.

Today's word pale is derived from pealu.

Another brightness term that was introduced early in the history of English,

but one that also later changed its meaning 

was the word scir (pronounced sheer).

According to Casson, scir  meant gleaming, clear, and bright.

Later in Middle English, the word's spelling changed to schir 

and added the meaning pure.

Over time, the word came to be associated only 

with the qualities of thinness and transparency,

meanings which the word sheer retains today. 

And what colors were in the English lexicon from the beginning?

Come back tomorrow and we'll walk through the watercolor world of early English.

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Rain Colors

What a difference one day makes.

The last couple of posts recounted our Indian Summer,

but yesterday gave us an unwelcome preview of winter,

with its gray, sullen skies, soaking rain, and sharp wind.

photo courtesy of morguefile.com

 I found myself out in that rainy mess after dark at rush hour.

Rush hour, when millions of people converge on city streets 

with one thought in mind:

to get away from where they are, so they can get to where they are not.

And they want to do it quickly. 

And they are hungry.

So there I was, sitting in my car in traffic, watching the rain bead up 

and then run in chilly streams down my windshield.

And perhaps because it was dark, and windy, and rainy, and crowded,

I found myself looking at lights shining through the darkness, 

illuminating the wet pavement.

An endless stream of oncoming headlights  

reminded me of a string of diamonds. 

Going my direction and up over the overpass, 

the tail lights glittered like strands of rubies.

I passed a church that had bright blue lights on either side of the front door.

An unusual choice, but I liked the originality of it.

There is something comforting about blue lights in the rain.

And of course, all that looking at color, got me thinking about color.

It is interesting to me that English did not always have color terms

as we know them today. 

Many of the terms that we recognize had different names

and referred primarily to brightness, not hue.

Having only a handful of brightness terms at one's disposal 

would make it difficult to communicate all the color the eye can see.

In the autumn, we delight in all kinds of rich, saturated colors

and we can describe them with hundreds of  terms: 

red, ruddy, russet, and rosy.

Or scarlet, carmine, vermilion, crimson, cinnabar.

The same can be said for yellow or orange, blue or green.

So tomorrow, join me as we go back in time 

to the days of the Anglo-Saxons,

and we'll visit our color terms at their earliest.

It will be a very bright--and eventually colorful--experience. 

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Falling Leaves

Yesterday was a work day, but the Indian Summer weather
 made me want to be outside.
For the most part, I had to be content with looking out the window.
Although once or twice I was able to steal a moment and step outside
to watch the autumn leaves fluttering to the ground.

And so it is that the woods behind our house
have just this week revealed their autumn color.
In the sunlight, the leaves glitter like gold.
But the camera rarely captures the subtle interplay of color and light
or the last dance of  hundreds of autumn leaves
as the breeze lifts them from their branches and swirls them around
in an autumnal fandango.
Standing still as the leaves flurry over and around is a special kind of delight.
Even people who prefer other seasons,
have to pay homage to the razzle-dazzle of autumn color.

Following are some photos of the seasonal panorama behind our house.
Each is accompanied with favorite quotes about autumn.

Robert Browning:
Days decrease and autumn grows. 
Autumn in everything.

   

Nathaniel Hawthorne:

 I cannot endure to waste anything 

so precious as autumnal sunshine

by staying in the house.

John Greenleaf Whittier:
The tints of autumn ... a mighty flower garden
blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.

This excerpt from a poem by George Eliot is the best:
Is not this a true autumn day?
Just the still melancholy that I love--
that makes life and nature harmonize ... .
 The trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay,
and begin to strew the ground,
that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air ... .
Delicious autumn! My soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird, I would fly about the earth,
seeking the successive autumns. 
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