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Color Terms

danofarlington

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,122
Location
Arlington, Virginia
As we all know, the way people use color terms is very subjective. Here is a very interesting site that allows us to better understand how we see and use these terms.

http://www.freimann.eu/domains/colornames.ch/

It's made worse by the poor quality of Internet colors. You never know what you're seeing. On EBay I see hats that look tan and called "silverbelly," and hats that are light gray that are called black. Naming the colors is in second place to that problem, in my opinion.
 

carldelo

One Too Many
Messages
1,568
Location
Astoria, NYC
It's ironic that a website obsessed with the nomenclature of color misspells the phrase 'color sense' as 'colour sence'.
The British variation 'colour' is fine, obviously, but 'sence'? I expect better proofreading from the Swiss...

Oops, I forgot to add that I find the results interesting....
 

randooch

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,869
Location
Ukiah, California
My latest Borsalino is missing its sub-sweat label, which would have told me the color name, so I went to Lowe's with the hat and perused their paint color samples. I only came away with 3, shown below upon the hat both indoors and outside.





The names are Brown Suede, Pine Bark, and Chestnut. Isn't that a big help? None of the three is quite right, naturally, although I think Pine Bark comes the closest. It's the middle one. The smooth surfaces of the samples are of course a problem vis-a-vis the felt texture.

Next step was translating the results of my test into Italian; that way it'll fit into Borsalino's list of mellifluous color names.

"Mistero" it is.
 
Last edited:

Brad Bowers

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,187
I've never seen a silverbelly that didn't look tan. Never seen one with a hint of silver or gray. Could just be me.

Brad
 

frussell

One Too Many
Messages
1,409
Location
California Desert
I've never seen a silverbelly that didn't look tan. Never seen one with a hint of silver or gray. Could just be me.

Brad

Brad- newer hats labeled silverbelly are tan-ish, but most of my older Stetson and Resistol westerns labeled silverbelly are more grey or "silver. " Those are my favorites. Today you have to look for "silver mist" or "dove" to get what I think of as silverbelly.
 

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