Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Gray, in my words (revised)

gaur : gray

The Illunse word for gray (grey) is gaur. The Gaur is a large, dark-coated, bovine animal of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Gaur is last name. In Basque gaur means today. In Sindarin gaur means werewolf. Gaur is the name of cities in Nepal, India and Malaysia.

This word is a mixture of the Latin word for gray which is glaucus (bluish gray) and the Old English word for gray which is græg.

I'm changing this word because I found a more appropriate Latin word for gray. Earlier I used the Latin word canus, which means gray but primarily for gray hair, and hence also means aged and hoary. My previous Illunse word for gray was ceag.

It's somewhat confounding for me to find definitive color words in Latin. Not because there are too few words for colors, but rather too many. There are words for a wide assortment of shades and hues.

Here's a link to Gray, in J.R.R. Tolkien's words

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