Friday, February 16, 2007

What exactly IS Puce?

Jazz, this post is for you. I was always under the impression that puce was actually a greenish sickly color. Now I know its a reddish purple sickly color.
You learn something new every day!

Puce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Puce is a
color generally considered to be dark rose to brownish-purple. A few sources define "puce" simply as "dark brown" [1]. It is occasionally referred to as pinkish-purple.
English usage dates from 1787. [from the
French puce, literally "flea." It is speculated that it refers to the colour of a squashed flea or the colour of a flea full of blood. Another theory is that the color name comes from the flea's droppings of digested blood, which spread out in deep red stain when water contacts them.
The color puce is usually defined with adjectives such as "dark", "deep", "intense" and even "brilliant". The color example above is a lighter
tint. On the other hand, the color may refer to blue-lavender of the Pennyroyal flower, also named puce in French. The name derives from the use of pungent Pennyroyal to ward off fleas. [2]
Prunes, which are dried plums, can also be said to be puce colored.

2 comments:

Jazz said...

I can't help but wonder whether I really needed to know that...

Lhia said...

Well, you DID ask.

**throws glitter at you and runs away**