Thursday, April 15, 2010

Violet, in my words

hacwin : violet

The Illunse word for the color violet is hacwin.

This word is a mixture of the Latin word for violet (or a purplish blue) which is hyacinthinus and the Old English word for a dark color which can be violet hǽwen (blue, azure, purple), which I transliterate to haewen.

It's perhaps a bit of a stretch to construct this word for violet. The Latin and Old English words that I'm using are not all that common.

I didn't use the Latin word purpura, which is like our word purple, because that word is for Tyrian purple - also known as royal purple or imperial purple - which is actually more of a dark red or maroon color.

I didn't find any words for the color violet in Sindarin or Quenya.

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