Zompist Bboard Again

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 7:14 am Magenta to me is one of those “impossible colors”, with a deeper/more intense saturation. Pink is generally light red—kind of like how Russian distinguishes between dark and light blue.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 7:36 am

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 7:14 am Magenta to me is one of those “impossible colors”, with a deeper/more intense saturation. Pink is generally light red—kind of like how Russian distinguishes between dark and light blue.

What is an "impossible color"?

jcb wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 12:39 pm Edit: The yellow that you see from a picture of a banana on a computer screen that's produced by combining multiple wavelengths of light isn't any less yellow than the yellow of seeing a real banana in person that (I assume) is produced by a single wavelength of light.)

malloc wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 8:58 pm Today is the Chinese New Year, Marti Gras, and the beginning of Ramadan all on the same day. Just found that an interesting coincidence.

Lērisama wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 7:19 am Based on this quote of Malloc's:

malloc wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 8:58 pm Today is the Chinese New Year, Marti Gras, and the beginning of Ramadan all on the same day. Just found that an interesting coincidence.

How would you usually refer to the Tuesday before Lent starts¹?

¹ Although in my experience, it's a mich bigger thing than Lent on its own is, but I'm trying to avoid naming it in the question

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Feb 17, 2026 6:10 am Pink is lighter for me, prototypically a bleached red. This picture seems pretty central:



Magenta is darker and bluer. E.g. this girl's hair:



There's certainly a lot of overlap. I can't find a good picture of actual magenta ink-- most illos are made on the computer, I think. This may come close, as it's intended as a test print:

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 1:15 pm

I found this image:

My thoughts:
* "watermelon" is red.
* "coral" and "salmon" are orange.
* "rouge, deep, bright, neon, fuchsia, hot, magenta, punch, doll" are magenta.
* The rest are pink.

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 1:15 pm If you asked a random person on the street what color that hair is, they'd probably say "pink" and not "magenta". (Sure, I would say "magenta", but that's because I'm a weirdo that uses many literary words and constructions in everyday speech.)

* "watermelon" is red.
* "coral" and "salmon" are orange.
* "rouge, deep, bright, neon, fuchsia, hot, magenta, punch, doll" are magenta.
* The rest are pink.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:57 pm I always find it curious that "fuchsia" is typically pronounced /ˈfjuːʃə/ and not /ˈf{ʊ,uː}k{siː,sj,ʃ}ə/ in English, when normally in English StG <ch> is borrowed as /k/ and a /j/ is typically only inserted for <ü>/<ue>...

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:08 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:57 pm I always find it curious that "fuchsia" is typically pronounced /ˈfjuːʃə/ and not /ˈf{ʊ,uː}k{siː,sj,ʃ}ə/ in English, when normally in English StG <ch> is borrowed as /k/ and a /j/ is typically only inserted for <ü>/<ue>...

How big is the share of the population who pronounce it at all in the first place, anyway?

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:10 pm

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 1:15 pm If you asked a random person on the street what color that hair is, they'd probably say "pink" and not "magenta". (Sure, I would say "magenta", but that's because I'm a weirdo that uses many literary words and constructions in everyday speech.)

Yeah, magenta may well be a subclass of pink.

/ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:41 pm IMO, magenta refers to the color #ff00ff, though most people would call it hot pink or neon pink.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:57 pm I always find it curious that "fuchsia" is typically pronounced /ˈfjuːʃə/ and not /ˈf{ʊ,uː}k{siː,sj,ʃ}ə/ in English, when normally in English StG <ch> is borrowed as /k/ and a /j/ is typically only inserted for <ü>/<ue>...

Lērisama wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 7:19 am How would you usually refer to the Tuesday before Lent starts¹?

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:10 pm I was curious about etymology— it turns out "magenta" was named for a Napoleonic battle. It was originally a dye whose inventor called it fuchsine. Not too surprisingly, it's magenta in color. This in turn derives from fuchsias (which were named for a dude named Fuchs). Like most flowers there are a lot of variations— actual fuchsia flowers can be bicolored and range from pink to magenta to purple to blue to white.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:56 pm

/ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:41 pm IMO, magenta refers to the color #ff00ff, though most people would call it hot pink or neon pink.

Sure, computer nerds are going to think of that color. Though I feel I should point out that monitors are not magic— obviously you can vary the brightness, and a particular monitor may be slightly more blue- or red-shifted. For that matter, your eyes will vary slightly from everyone else's.

Color printing relies on black, magenta, cyan, and yellow ink. There's even less guarantee that all batches of magenta ink are the "same color".

Probably most of you know this, but computer and print colors are alternate ways of fooling the eye, which has three types of color receptors. Color scientists say we are trichromats. What's usually called color blindness is more accurately dichromacy. Some animals have more color receptors, and thus would not find either our computer or print illustrations to look right.